Lee grows as it goes Postgrad hoops team flourishes

LEE – It is perhaps the ultimate basketball jigsaw puzzle – starting a program from scratch.

But for the Lee Academy postgraduate team, the puzzle is now reality as a 17-player roster that didn’t exist four months ago is now playing a full schedule against college and fellow prep school squads from around the Northeast.

“I’ve been very busy,” said Brian McDormand, a longtime high school coach in Massachusetts who has taken the reins of the first-year program. “It’s a lot of hours, and I’ve been getting a lot of good ideas from Bruce [Lindberg, the Lee headmaster]. We’re working at it, trying to build a program.”

McDormand was hired July 6, and since then has worked closely with Lindberg and assistant coach Ryan Conboy scouring the region in search of student-athletes interested in coming to north-central Maine for a year of building both their athletic and academic resumes.

McDormand spent much of the summer at player camps, as well as making contact with high school, college and prep school coaches, among them Ed Jones of Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield, Whit Lesure of Bridgton Academy and Dick Whitmore of Colby College, McDormand’s college coach.

“The prep schools get an overabundance of applications,” said McDormand. “They can accept only so many players, and there are a lot of kids out there who want to play.”

The result of their efforts is a roster of players with such varied birthplaces as Germany, the Cayman Islands, Canada and Lithuania as well as Massachusetts, Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana and New Jersey.

“These are talented kids, the challenge is harnessing all their talent,” said Conboy. “Everyone’s an all-star, and it’s a matter of working together as a team.”

The roster includes several Division I prospects, among them 6-foot-3 guard Corey Bingham of Lynn, Mass., whose father and McDormand were high school teammates, and Jan Christian Both, a 6-10 product of Germany who has contended for a berth on that country’s junior (under age 20) national team.

Other top players include 6-7 Kenyale Evans of Chicago and 6-8 Travon Wilcher of Springfield, Mass., both of whom have attracted Division I recruiting interest.

“We have a couple of very good players,” said McDormand, “and a lot of athletic guys with pretty good skills that we’re trying to get into roles and into a system.”

There’s also been a lifestyle adjustment for most of the players as they adapt to a rural setting.

“There’s been more good days than bad,” said McDormand. “It’s culturally very different for everybody, but basically everyone’s done pretty well.”

Lee enters weekend play with a 4-6 record – including a victory over MCI – while playing a schedule consisting primarily of prep school and small-college opponents. The Pandas have had that reasonable first-year success despite being without starting point guard Kola Togunde, a 5-10 product of Garland, Texas, who has been sidelined with a knee injury.

Togunde hopes to return to the lineup after Christmas break, but in the interim 6-1 Jorge Ebanks from Georgetown, Cayman Islands, has filled in well at the point, McDormand said.

“We’ve been more than competitive against most of the teams on our schedule,” said McDormand.

Lee currently has a schedule of more than 30 games, a number McDormand expects to grow.

“We’ll extend the season as long as we can,” McDormand said. “We’re not in a league, so we’re still looking for more opponents.”