Hall-Dale, Dexter battled in summer

At least it’s not Dirigo.

The Dexter girls basketball team will face a stiff challenge when they head to Augusta Saturday for the Class C state final, but it won’t come from the Cougars of Dixfield.

For the first time since 1994, Dirigo didn’t win the Western Maine Class C title. That went to Hall-Dale of Farmingdale, which beat the Cougars 40-38 in last week’s regional final.

The 20-1 Bulldogs will face four-time defending EM Class C champ Dexter at 1:05 p.m. on Saturday.

Tigers coach Jody Grant, who spends a lot of time on the road scouting teams, has seen Hall-Dale three times in person – once in a regular-season game against Dirigo and twice in a tournament – and a couple of times on film.

Oh, and the Tigers and Bulldogs played over the summer. Grant said Hall-Dale beat Dexter by four points in a summer game during which personal fouls weren’t tracked.

“We’ll take our chances. It doesn’t really matter who we play,” he said after Saturday night’s Eastern Maine final win over rival Central of Corinth. “Hall-Dale’s very good, we’re very familiar with each other. We’ll see what happens when the ball goes in the air.”

Two of the Hall-Dale players who worry Grant are seniors Caitlyn Laflin and Chelsea Dionne.

Laflin, a 6-foot forward, averaged a whopping 24.3 points per game in the tournament, while Dionne, a 6-1 center, scored 8 ppg. Both girls reached the 1,000-point milestone this year.

“They’re going to give us some matchup problems, they really are,” Grant said. “We’re going to have to maximize possessions, rebound the heck out of the basketball. That’s going to be a tall order.”

Grant called Laflin “a horse” of a player – and that’s a compliment, he emphasized. She was a semifinalist for the Miss Maine Basketball award. Dionne, he added, can step out to shoot 3-pointers, which makes her a tough matchup for Dexter’s smaller guards.

Senior guard Heather St. Pierre chipped in with 7 ppg during the tournament, while guard Katie Frett had a relatively quiet postseason – until the 5-2 junior hit a basket with 32 seconds left to give Hall-Dale a 39-38 lead over Dirigo in the WM final.

Dexter will look to counter with guard play and man-to-man defense, which got the Tigers through two tourney games in which their offense sputtered at times.

Mallory Ames, Dexter’s 6-6 junior center, and 5-11 junior forward Katie Poirier will look to shut down Laflin, while forward Sabrina Cote will get the toughest defensive assignment, which could be the versatile Dionne. Cote, a 5-9 senior, was named the Eastern Maine tourney MVP earlier this week.

Dexter’s other starters, senior guards Nicci Burton and Tracy Mountain, will be relied upon to pressure their Hall-Dale counterparts.

“I think we really have a chance to put some pressure on them in the halfcourt,” Grant said.