Tom McCann has been a key part of the Maine-Nebraska Friendship Series since the second year of the event – in 1986.

And as the longtime coach at Kearney (Nebr.) High School watched Team Nebraska’s victory over Maine in the first meet of the 2005 Friendship Series at Brewer High School on Monday night, McCann said he has stayed with the exchange for the last 20 years because it has stayed true to its intent as created by founders Wally LaFountain of Winslow and Mark Pierce of Lincoln Southeast High School in Nebraska.

“Really, as Wally LaFountain has stated probably more than once, ‘Wrestling is an excuse to get together and visit another part of the country and make some friends and take some kids for a new experience,'” McCann said. “For some of our kids this year, they’ve never flown before, and a lot of them haven’t been out of the Midwest. Most of these kids are seeing a part of the country they’ve never seen. It’s a new adventure, and it’s really what this is all about.”

The 16-member Team Nebraska is a star-studded roster, featuring seven individual state champions from the approximately 230 schools in the state that field wrestling teams in four classes, McCann said. The five seniors on the team all are set to wrestle in college next year, he added. Maine has 64 schools that offer wrestling in three classes, so using that comparison alone the Friendship Series shouldn’t be all that competitive, especially given the mass popularity of the sport throughout Nebraska. Just consider that the Nebraska state championships are televised statewide, and that the meet has had to be moved to an 18,000-seat arena in Omaha because officials had to turn fans away from the previous site – which holds 13,500.

Yet McCann has been encouraged by what he has seen of Maine’s effort to advance the sport.

“Maine wrestling has really improved over the last 20 years,” he said. “They brought a team out to Nebraska last year that really we had a hard time beating at our place, and we had some quality kids. They had Chris Remsen [a four-time state champion from Camden Hills of Rockport] and Decota Cotton [a three-time state champion from Noble of North Berwick], some really quality kids.”

McCann also is impressed by some members of this year’s Maine team, particularly brothers Chris and Jeremiah Barkac, the Dexter High products who scored Maine’s lone victories in the Brewer meet.

“They’re tough, they’re tough kids, real solid wrestlers,” McCann said. “They have good technique, and they go right after it.”

McCann says it doesn’t matter whether a wrestler comes from a small town or a big city, Nebraska or Maine. Dedicated effort can yield giant results.

“As I tell all the kids I coach, your best coach is going to be you, the individual,” McCann said. “You have to be like a sponge and absorb all the wrestling you can, all the techniques you can get from a variety of people, whether it’s an Olympic champ or your own coach. And you must seek out the best competition you can in order to improve and take those steps that are going to move you to that next level, be it a national-place winner or an NCAA champion.

“That’s what it takes, and those kids can come from anywhere. It can be done if kids really want to put the work into it.”

The Maine-Nebraska Friendship Series continued Tuesday night at Winslow High School. Additional meets are scheduled Friday at the Portland Expo in conjunction with the Maine Games, and Sunday at Lincoln Academy in Newcastle.

The Lincoln Academy meet will have a distinct Midcoast flavor, with wrestlers to compete for Maine expected to include Murphy McGowan, Joe McGowan, True Bragg, Derek Young, Cody Laite, Harry Pearson and Oliver Bradeen of Camden Hills of Rockport; Josh Pelletier and Adam Tweedie of Bucksport; and Forrest Melhorn of Lincoln Academy.

Busy as a Barkac

It figures to be a busy summer of wrestling for Jeremiah Barkac.

Barkac, the two-time Class C state champion at 103 pounds who just completed his sophomore year at Dexter High, followed up his high school season by placing fifth in his weight class at the New England championships and then winning the 105-pound titles in both freestyle and Greco-Roman competition at the Northeast Junior Regional Wrestling Championships at Brockport, N.Y.

The Parkman resident, who earned All-American honors in freestyle wrestling last summer, has been invited to spend a week at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. in mid-July.

Soon after that, Barkac will head to Fargo, N.D., to compete in the 2005 National Junior Championships, where last year he finished fifth in the 98-pound freestyle cadet class to earn his All-American status.

Barkac, who along with older brother Chris won their matches during the first meet of the 21st annual Maine-Nebraska Friendship Series at Brewer High School, will head to Bristol, R.I., this weekend to compete in the Ocean State Classic tournament.