NEWPORT – When Bill Brooks was a senior for the Nokomis Regional High School basketball team during the 1987-88 season, the Warriors were coming off a 2-16 campaign but had a veteran nucleus returning for new head coach Jim DiFrederico.

Nokomis underwent a quick turnaround that year, finishing 12-6 and earning a trip to the Eastern Maine Class A tournament.

Two decades later, Brooks hopes a similar scenario will play out next winter, as a veteran Nokomis team hopes to make marked improvement from last year’s 2-16 finish.

Only this time Brooks is not a player, but the new head coach.

“There’s definitely a lot of parallels,” said the 37-year-old Brooks, who was named boys varsity basketball coach at his alma mater earlier this week to replace DiFrederico, who stepped down after a total of 16 years at Nokomis for health reasons. “Coach DiFrederico came in and turned things around, and we went 12-6, played at the Bangor Auditorium and had a season we’ll remember all our lives.

“Like back then, this year we’ve got a core group of seniors who are definitely hungry to win. They want to win, and they want to do what it takes to win.”

After graduating from Nokomis in 1988, Brooks went on to play at the University of Maine at Farmington under head coaches Len MacPhee and Brian Dodge.

He has been a teacher and coach since graduating, including five years as the boys varsity coach at Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield along with stints as an assistant and subvarsity coach at Skowhegan, Winslow and for the past three years as the boys freshman coach at Nokomis under DiFrederico, who finished his coaching career with an overall record of 264-194.

“Obviously I learned a lot from coach MacPhee and coach Dodge at UMF,” said Brooks. “and to work under Mike Nelson at Skowhegan, Jim Poulin at Winslow and coach DiFrederico here, that’s a pretty good triumvirate to learn from.”

At approximately 745 students, Nokomis will be the smallest Class A school in the Eastern Maine basketball ranks next winter with the drop of Gardiner, Erskine Academy of South China and Old Town from Class A to Class B.

The Warriors also draw from a rural area by Class A school standards, with students from eight towns feeding into the program.

“One of the big things that stood out when I talked to Bill was that his plan has a wider scope than just the varsity basketball team,” said Nokomis athletic director Jason Tardy, a high school classmate of Brooks.

Brooks already has visited the middle schools in the district, and also has met with a variety of people in the SAD 48 community in an effort to unify the district’s basketball interests under a single philosophy.

“The program is here to benefit the kids,” said Brooks, a science teacher at Sebasticook Middle School in Newport who lives in Corinna with his wife Jill and 5-year-old son Jayden. “If we can all work in the same direction, we’ll move toward reaching that common goal, to benefit the kids.”

And part of that benefit is to bring winning basketball back to Nokomis, which has struggled in recent years.

“When I graduated from here, I thought that coming back here to coach was something I always wanted to do,” said Brooks.

Hallett leaves Washburn posts

Chris Hallett has stepped down as boys basketball and girls soccer coach at Washburn High School to take an administrative post at Ashland High School.

Hallett, the K-12 guidance counselor at Washburn for the past two years, is set to become the new assistant principal and activities coordinator at Ashland.

A Washburn High School graduate, Hallett coached the Beavers’ boys basketball team for the last two years. He compiled a 24-15 record and led his team to a pair of postseason appearances. Washburn advanced to the Eastern Maine Class D preliminary round in 2006, and last winter earned a trip to the Bangor Auditorium before being ousted in the regional quarterfinals by Schenck of East Millinocket.

That team graduated eight seniors, including all of its primary players.

Hallett also coached the girls soccer team last fall, leading Washburn to a berth in the Eastern D semifinals where it was nipped by Van Buren 2-1 in penalty kicks. The Beavers finished the season with a 13-4 record, and return their key players this fall, Hallett said.