Schedule didn’t deter Beavers

BANGOR – The Washburn High School girls basketball team has played plenty of basketball lately and it seems to have helped them.

Due to a rash that closed school and postponed games, Washburn’s girls had to squeeze their final four regular season games into five nights.

Four games in five nights can really take a toll but the Beavers wound up winning all four and then won a preliminary game before beating Southern Aroostook of Dyer Brook 43-32 in Saturday night’s Eastern Maine Class D quarterfinal.

Washburn coach Ron Ericson and his players said the four wins in five nights gave them a healthy mindset entering postseason play.

“It gave us a big boost and a lot of momentum,” said junior forward Erica McDougal. “We had to play a lot of basketball but we have to play a lot of basketball down here [in Bangor].”

“It left us off on a high so we’re still going on that streak,” said junior guard Alex Bird.

“It gave us more motivation. We’re on a run and we don’t feel like stopping,” said junior forward Kelsee McLaughlin.

They also said it was an interesting experience.

“It was an adrenaline rush. You’ve got to go with the flow,” said Bird. “We got tired and we had somebody sick just about every day that week. We had to step it up a little bit more and we did pretty well.”

McLaughlin said it was “fun.

“It wasn’t as exhausting as you’d think. We just kept going and going,” said McLaughlin. “We knew we had to come out strong every game so we did. We played as hard as we could and we came out with the wins.”

Ericson said “if we used just five kids, we could have run out of gas in a hurry. Even though we’re a Class D team, we try to run a lot of players in there. They all played well and that has helped us out a lot.”