Jason Mills has stepped down after seven years as the boys varsity basketball coach at John Bapst of Bangor.

Mills, who lives in LaGrange and teaches physical education at his alma mater, Penquis Valley High School in Milo, cited the strains related to his daily travel from work to his coaching job in Bangor as the reason for giving up the John Bapst post.

“There’s never really a good time to do something like this,” said Mills, “but it’s more a family thing and the time I spend traveling. It’s an hour and 10 minutes just to and from practice every day, and at times it seems like you’re just constantly on the go.”

Mills and his wife have two young children, a daughter in the third grade and a son who will enter kindergarten this fall.

Mills replaced Mike Miragliuolo as the John Bapst head coach before the 2001-2002 season.

He guided the Crusaders through four years at the Class A level before the program dropped to Class B at the start of the 2005-06 season.

With a senior-laden team last winter, John Bapst finished the regular season with a 9-9 record and defeated Old Town in a preliminary-round contest before falling to Camden Hills of Rockport in the Eastern B quarterfinals.

Mills will remain in the coaching ranks, as he plans to return this fall for his fifth season as the boys varsity soccer coach at Penquis. Mills was named the 2007 Penobscot Valley Conference Class C coach of the year in that sport.

County teams coping

The spring sports season is alive and well in Aroostook County, despite record-setting snowfall that lingered on the ground well into the spring.

“We did not have to cancel our season as had been rumored all around the state,” said Presque Isle athletic administrator Dave Heald on Monday.

Heald said middle school athletic fields in his community are already being used, while the high school fields should be playable later this week.

“Sometimes you wonder if it’s going to happen this year, but there’s a five- to seven-day period every year when we get on the fields for the first time,” he said.

Most County teams are beginning regular-season play in baseball, softball and tennis this week, some after spending the recently concluded April vacation week on trips to more southern locales for preseason games.

The bulk of Monday’s games in the region were played as originally scheduled, with Ashland, Houlton, Central Aroostook of Mars Hill and Limestone Community School/Maine School of Science and Mathematics among the schools with playable fields scheduled to host contests.

But not every field is playable yet, as Fort Kent, Madawaska and Van Buren are still dealing with the aftermath of the approximately 200 inches of snow that fell in the St. John Valley this winter. That was compounded by Tuesday’s heavy rain.

The playing fields used by Madawaska High School are essentially bare, according to athletic administrator Ed Marshall, but the snowbanks surrounding the fields remained 8 to 10 feet high as of Monday. The water from that slowly melting snow left the adjacent fields much too wet for practices or games.

“You might be able to get on our softball field,” Marshall said, “but to get there you might have to use snowshoes to get over the snowbanks.”

Marshall already has rescheduled all home baseball and softball games originally set for the first two weeks of the regular season, swapping home-and-home dates against opponents whenever possible.

As a result, Madawaska will play eight road games before hosting its first home contests against Washburn on May 12. After that opener, the Owls will host games on May 13, 16, 19, 21, 27, 28 and 30 to conclude regular-season play.

Normally the Owls would have practiced in the school parking lot once the temperatures had warmed sufficiently, but this year that hasn’t been possible as virtually every open space in the area has been used to store the overflow of plowed snow.

So when Madawaska played its first game of the season at Central Aroostook of Mars Hill on Monday, it also marked the team’s first extended period outside the school’s gymnasium.

“The first grounders we take outside [were] at Mars Hill on Monday, and the next grounders we take outside will be when we play at Mars Hill again on Wednesday,” said Marshall.

Neighboring Fort Kent similarly has not been on its home fields yet this spring.

“The baseball and softball fields are pretty much bare, but they’re awfully, awfully wet right now,” said athletic administrator and assistant principal Paul Michaud.

Fort Kent originally was scheduled to host Washburn on Tuesday and Caribou on Thursday but has had to reschedule or relocate those contests.

Michaud acknowledged that teams in the region would have been in a more substantial scheduling predicament but for a couple of factors – the gradual, rainless snow melt that enabled some fields to dry more quickly and the fact that the start of the spring sports season is nearly a full week later than usual this spring due to a scheduling quirk related to the fact that 2008 is a leap year.

“If the season didn’t start later this year, we’d definitely be in more trouble with the schedule,” he said.

The County’s high school tennis schedule isn’t expected to be affected greatly by the late spring, as many courts recently have been cleared of snow.

“We should be good to go with tennis,” said Michaud.

Marshall did say that preseason practices were limited by the snow pack, though several schools were able to hold some practice sessions at an indoor facility in Madawaska.

Danforth takes OH football job

Oxford Hills of South Paris has turned to an alumnus, Nate Danforth, to fill its varsity football coaching vacancy.

Danforth, a 1993 Oxford Hills graduate who was a two-way lineman during his playing days with the Vikings, replaces Bob Austin. Austin retired after three decades on the Oxford Hills staff, including the last three years as head coach.

Danforth has been on the Vikings’ coaching staff since first serving as a volunteer assistant in 1999. He coached the school’s junior varsity program for several years before moving up to defensive coordinator last fall.

He also has been head coach of the Oxford Hills boys track team for the past five years.

Oxford Hills’ football team will graduate 10 seniors from last year, when the Vikings finished 3-5 and missed the Pine Tree Conference Class A playoffs for the second straight year.

eclark@bangordailynews.net

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