TURNER – Coach Matt Reynolds meandered through a gate from the starting area at the Leavitt Invitational on Saturday and stopped at a waxing table to his right. He took his gloved hands and placed them systematically on the top of three girls’ heads in front of him and pulled their winter hats over their eyes. The group laughed.
That in itself wouldn’t normally turn heads, except that Reynolds was wearing a bright orange jacket, emblematic of the Jay Tigers’ ski team. Two of the girls wore similar gear, but the third wore the yellow and green of Livermore Falls.
“This is the team,” said Reynolds. “What you see is who we are.”
The two schools, longtime rivals in most sports, have formed a bond in recent years on the ski slopes and trails. This year, for the first time in recent memory, the schools are sharing coaches, a practical move based on the numbers.
“Unlike the other sports teams, these two teams skied together right up until the eighth grade,” said Alpine coach Dave Richards. “It’s not until the eighth grade they went off to different schools, anyway.”
The Andies send a full team of girls and only one boy into the mix, while Jay does the opposite, sending a full boys’ team and only two girls. Combining the two into one team just made sense – to everyone but the Maine Principal’s Association.
“That’s the ultimate goal, though,” said Reynolds. “From what I understand, you have to show need for two years. The goal is to combine Jay and Livermore Falls ski teams into one, and under which heading it would be I am not sure, but for now it’s not official. We still have a Livermore Falls team and a Jay team.”
But the skiers, who have known each other for what seems like an eternity, don’t have a problem with it.
“We actually did this in soccer this year, too,” said Lindsey Timberlake, the lone Livermore Falls girl skier. “The rivalry is more of just a football rivalry, really.”
Timberlake, Katie Webster and Jenna Dubord were still the only three female skiers from the two schools at the Leavitt Invitational this weekend, even with the combined efforts of both schools. The alpine team has more participants, but the numbers at a lot of these traditional skiing schools has shown a steady decline.
“In our case, where we were only five kids strong, the superintendent starts getting nervous about funding a program,” said Richards. “The AD was 100 percent behind us, and what made this happen was a combination of the coaching staff, Matt, myself and my wife, Doreen, all working together. For the kids, it was the most natural thing for them.”
And Richards is worried about the trend spreading to other schools, too.
“This is going to end up being a common denominator across the state because you’re starting to see at a lot of the meets now, several teams traveling together,” said Richards. “Hopefully the MPA will wake up here at some point and see what’s about to happen. We’re going to lose programs. This needs to happen.”
According to the two coaches, the transition and the ability of both schools to work together has been seamless.
“We haven’t run into a single issue,yet anywhere, across the board, in terms of equipment, in terms of meets or parents,” said Reynolds. “It’s just one team. You have to coordinate with two different athletic directors, but other than that, it’s all been smooth.”
Any combination of the two schools’ enrollments would most likely bump a cooperative team up into Class B, maybe even into Class A, but that is another challenge the coaches seem ready to face. In fact, last week, the Livermore Falls girls’ alpine team placed second in a multi-class slalom race at Titcomb Mountain in Farmington.
“(At that meet) there were several teams getting off of one bus, with two or three skiers on each team,” said Richards. “It looked like the beginning of the end, if you know what I mean. It won’t be much longer before the programs start dropping at some of those schools. We don’t want that to happen.”
For now, the skiers continue to operate as one unit. They share wax, transportation and even coaches, but most importantly, they continue to share camaraderie.
“We’re hoping that, if everybody sees how well this works, than maybe the people who make the rules will change them and do the right thing,” said Richards.
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