Durost in debut as announcer College junior relishes chance

BANGOR – The regular crew of Eastern Maine tournament announcers ceded the microphone twice Saturday to a Bangor Auditorium rookie.

Reid Durost, a 21-year-old Bangor resident and junior at the New England School of Communications in Bangor, made his Auditorium debut in the Saturday afternoon Eastern Maine Class B girls quarterfinal between No. 1 Waterville and No. 9 Old Town.

“It’s kind of a little weird dream come true,” Durost said with a smile after the game. “I’ve been coming here since I was a little kid. There’s something about the Auditorium that’s almost magical in a sense. It’s the old building, people come out in droves and go crazy for the teams. You can’t beat it.”

Durost may be new to the Auditorium microphone, but he has plenty of other experience. He announces many of the sports events at Husson College, and he did some Western Maine tournament games at the Augusta Civic Center during his senior year at Hall-Dale High School in 2005.

Earlier this year, Durost said, he called Eastern Maine tourney director Bill Fletcher and asked if he could announce some games. Durost spent Saturday at the Auditorium shadowing regular announcers Allen Snell and Becky Bubar.

“I just took the initiative, I guess,” Durost said. “I’d like to do something like this later on [as a career]. I can talk about sports all day, even if people don’t want to listen.”

About 10 minutes before the Waterville-Old Town game, it was decided Durost would announce. So he didn’t have time to be nervous and wasn’t too worried, he said, because he’s done so many games at Husson.

Durost was pleased with how things went – from across the Auditorium he sounded just fine – but said he made some small mistakes such as giving an incorrect number of fouls for a player.

Durost played soccer, basketball and baseball for Hall-Dale, although he didn’t play basketball in 2005, which was the year the Bulldogs won the Class C state title.

Durost’s parents Dick and Lynne – yes, that Dick Durost, the executive director of the Maine Principals’ Association, which runs the postseason tournaments and regulates Maine interscholastic athletics – were at the Auditorium Saturday to hear Reid make his debut.

“This week for my dad is just crazy with all the traveling from Portland to Augusta to Bangor,” Reid Durost said. “He made a point of letting me know that he would base what he did on my schedule. I can’t say enough about the two of them.”

Old Town seniors go out

It was a bittersweet finale for Alan Brownewell and the Old Town girls basketball team as they fell to Waterville 63-37 Saturday afternoon.

The Coyotes will graduate all five starters in Cally Randall, Sarah Wilcox, Ashley Goodwin, Jenna King and Rebecca Taylor – a group that endured an 0-18 record in 2006-07 as a Class A school.

The program had a huge turnaround for its first Class B season. Old Town finished with a 12-9 record, including a preliminary-round upset of No. 8 Gardiner, and the team’s first tournament appearance since 1998, when the then-Indians made it to the Eastern Maine Class A finals.

“These kids have played right along, they’ve worked hard and they’ve earned the chance to be here,” Brownewell said. “I’ve been thinking, there have been so many good Old Town players that have never been here, in 10 years. It’s good for this group of kids.”