BANGOR – Although the Woodland girls basketball team didn’t advance out of the semifinals, coach Arnie Clark was pleased with the way the season turned out, considering the two freshmen in the starting lineup playing against a more seasoned Calais squad.

“It’s a whole new ball team from what we had last year,” he said after his team’s 53-31 loss to Calais in a Friday semifinal at the Bangor Auditorium. “No one would have thought we’d be playing in the semifinals in Eastern Maine Class C.”

And next year, the Dragons won’t be. They’re dropping down to Class D, where the Woodland girls have had a lot of success in the past.

According to the enrollment figures in the Class C tourney program, Woodland High has an enrollment of 198, down from 241 last year. The enrollment cutoff for Class C is 230-399.

Their 15-5 Class C record, combined with the return of all five starters and the loss of only two seniors, Kayla Kochendoerfer and Nicole St. Pierre, makes the Dragons an automatic favorite to advance to the Class D tourney in 2005-06.

The one drawback?

“We’ll have to deal with Lee,” Clark said.

The Pandas beat the Dragons twice in the regular season, but Woodland beat Lee in the 2003 Eastern Maine Class D final for the Dragons’ third straight regional crown.

Eagan speaks for student-athletes

Calais senior guard Tracie Eagan, who scored seven points against Woodland Friday, isn’t merely one of the best basketball players on one of the top girls programs in the state.

She also spent the past year helping shape a report that aims to give guidelines for effective high school sports programs.

Eagan was a kind of student advisor to a panel of Maine citizens from all branches of education and athletics who put together “Sports Done Right – A Call to Action on Behalf of Maine’s Student-Athletes.”

“Sports Done Right” was put together by the University of Maine’s federally funded Coaching Maine Youth to Success initiative.

She became involved with the report through her mother, Husa Eagan, who knows Ruth Fitzpatrick, a field specialist for UMaine’s National Center for Student Aspirations. Eagan told Fitzpatrick about her experiences playing high school sports and Fitzpatrick tapped Eagan, along with former Falmouth High student Trevor Paul, to serve as advisors.

The report was unveiled last month and is now being introduced at regional forums across the state. Eagan was pleased to see a forum set for Washington County.

“They’re doing some things in Machias, so that’s good,” said Eagan, who was a member of the 2004 EM Class C all-tourney team.

The Machias forum will be Thursday at the UMaine-Machias Science Building, Room 102.