USM’s Flaherty earns league coaching award

University of Southern Maine baseball coach Ed Flaherty has been named Little East Conference Coach of the Year while four of his players have been selected to the all-conference team.

Earning first-team honors were junior first baseman Max Arsenault, outfielder Ryan Bourque and junior shortstop Nick Vadaro. Sophomore outfielder Eddie Skeffington gained second-team honors.

Flaherty led the Huskies to a 29-15 overall record, including 11-3 in conference play, good enough for a share of the regular season conference title.

Bourque leads the Huskies in batting with a .387 average while piling up 18 doubles, five homers, two triples and 43 RBIs. He also leads the team in slugging percentage (.613).

Vadaro leads the Huskies in triples with four, while batting .361 with 10 doubles, two home runs and 23 RBIs. Arsenault is hitting .349 with 16 doubles, two homers and 38 RBIs while Skeffington has posted a .373 average while driving in a team-high 44 runs with eight doubles, three triples and three homers.

Southern Maine earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Division III tournament. The fifth-seeded Huskies will kick off New England regional play this morning at 9:30 a.m. against Salem State College in Harwich, Mass.

DeWitt runs into All-N.E. status

Ellsworth native Joey DeWitt helped earn All-New England honors for his 4-by-800-meter relay at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell last Friday.

DeWitt competed at the New England Track and Field Championships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. All three NCAA divisions were represented by schools at the meet.

DeWitt, a sophomore at the Lowell, Mass.,-based school, ran the anchor leg for the relay team, which finished eighth with a time of 8 minutes and 9 seconds flat. His teammates were Patrick Morasse, Erick Colon and Ruben Sanca.

DeWitt also finished 13th in the 1,500-meter run in 4 minutes, 1.9 seconds.

Puls’ Hoosiers in NCAAs

Former University of Maine interim head coach Michelle Puls, who was a standout player for the Black Bears, is headed to the NCAA regionals with the Indiana University softball team as an assistant coach for the Hoosiers.

Indiana (29-23-1) will play Utah (38-19) in the opening round of the Austin, Texas, regional Friday afternoon. The other matchup in the double-elimination regional tournament is Texas (49-7) vs. University of Texas at San Antonio (37-12).

Puls, a Bangor native, is a hitting and outfield coach at Indiana. She served as the interim head coach at UMaine in 2005 before leaving for Indiana.

Indiana made it to the semifinals of the Big Ten conference tournament but gained an at-large NCAA berth.