The Brewer girls basketball team has a tough road ahead considering its three-win season last year and five-year absence from the quarterfinal round of the Eastern Maine Class A tournament. But new head coach Andy Nickerson is eager to turn things around.

With a little hard work and the return of several key players, he believes, it’s a doable task even as soon as the 2005-06 season.

“We’ve got some successful athletes in the school and we just need to relate that to the game of basketball,” Nickerson said recently. “Our goal is to try to get a program that is, right from the top and all the way down through, working in the right direction.”

Nickerson, a former standout Brewer athlete, was formally hired in a Brewer school board meeting June 6. He took over for Mark Savage, who had coached the Witches for five seasons before stepping down in April.

Now the owner of Wight’s Sporting Goods in Bangor, Nickerson, who lives in Holden with wife Julie and daughters Holly, 12, and Megan, 10, has the Brewer girls playing in the popular summer league at Bangor High School.

“The sooner we master the fundamentals and get kids truly believing they can be successful in this sport, the sooner the whole program will move to another level,” he said.

That may be the focus for now, but come November practice will be all about defense.

It shouldn’t be too much of a change for the Witches once they get into that aspect of the game. Savage had Brewer playing a lot of man-to-man defense and that’s what Nickerson plans to do, too.

“I’m a very defensive-minded coach and we will play man-to-man defense the majority of the time,” he said. “Fundamentally if you can’t play man-to-man defense you can’t play defense. … Offensively we have ideas of what we want to do but we have to continue to evaluate the talent we have.”

One of Brewer’s more talented returning players is Katie Quimby, who will be a senior next year.

Quimby, a Big East Class A first-team all-conference guard, has been among the summer league participants.

“She’s been a great leader to this point,” Nickerson said. “I’m very happy to have her as a part of our program. She can play. She’s a quality basketball player who knows the game and it’s a good talent for us to be able to build our program around.”

Other key returning players should include junior forward Jordan McLain, junior guard-forward Rachel Joyce and sophomore center Katie Kenney.

Quimby, McLain and Joyce all played softball for Kelly Cookson this spring. It’s one of the most successful programs at the school – the Witches went 14-2 this spring and made it to the Class A state final last year – and one Nickerson hopes to emulate.

“Hopefully we can start to rise up to that level,” he said. “The kids love playing softball and I think they love it because they believe themselves in that environment. They like the structure and the knowledge Kelly brings to the program. Kids love being successful and they gravitate towards that.”

While Nickerson is familiar as a community member with the current varsity basketball team, he’s been actively involved at the youth level over the years. He had also served as an assistant to Brewer boys coach Mark Reed during the 2001-02 season. When Savage resigned Nickerson jumped at the chance to coach at the varsity level again.

“I feel like my knowledge of the game is solid enough and I feel like I can relate my knowledge to the kids,” he said. “The kids are fun to work with. They seem eager to learn what we’re trying to do. It was just the right school, right time, right place.”

The Witches, like the rest of the teams that formerly comprised the Big East Class A – Bangor, Hampden, Old Town and Nokomis of Newport – will all have a rough schedule as they join the new Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference’s North division. Teams like Messalonskee of Oakland, 2004 EM runner-up Skowhegan and Mt. Blue of Farmington are all considered very early favorites to advance in the tournament.

But Nickerson likes the challenging schedule.

“That’s how we’ll get better. We’ll show up and hopefully what we bring to the table we will compete with teams,” he said. “If we continue to improve we’ll win some games. That’s what everyone is trying to do.”

Nickerson said he plans to stick with the Witches for a while. He’s the program’s sixth head coach since 1990.

And he refuses to call his first winter a building season.

“When I took this job on I looked at it as a project that would be fun to do,” he said. “But part of it is, I’m not a very patient person. So from Day One we’re going to do whatever it takes to be successful this year.”

Field hockey games set

The state’s top senior field hockey players will pick up their sticks for the final time under their high school banners for Saturday’s McNally Senior All-Star game at Bowdoin College in Brunswick.

There will actually be two games Saturday. Alumni who have played in previous all-star games can take part in an alumni game starting at 5 p.m. The senior all-star game will start at 7. Both games will be played at the Pickard Field complex.

The East team and West team will face each other. An MVP award for each team will be picked.

Among the players expected to attend are Miss Maine Field hockey winner Julia Chase (Greely) and Miss Field Hockey finalists Nicole Emery (Winthrop), Katy LePage (Skowhegan), Laura Nimon (Gardiner), and Bronwyn Potthoff (Deering).

The game, which is sponsored by Maine’s field hockey coaches’ association, is named for longtime Gardiner coach Moe McNally.

Jessica Bloch can be reached at 990-8193, 1-800-310-8600, or jbloch@bangordailynews.net