And One: Coaches displeased with pre-Christmas rush

All around the state, teams are scheduled to play six games, one-third of their schedule, before the holiday break. And many coaches would like the schedule-makers to get a lump of coal in their stocking for it.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous to play six games before Christmas,” Oxford Hills boys’ coach Scott Graffam said. “We’re going to play six games in 10 days — four days of practice and six games.”

“They’re worried about all of the tournaments during Christmas break. They’re worried about schools that have midterms,” Graffam said. “Find out which schools have midterms, and schedule it differently. It’s ridiculous to have a three-game week before Christmas. There’s only one more game that they have to put some place else.”

Coaches cite the lack of practice time as the most glaring drawback to the schedule. It can be particularly frustrating to new coaches or those with young teams.

“It’s crazy. The season seemed to start a week later and yet we’ve already jammed up six games before we go into the holiday break,” said first-year Buckfield girls’ coach Ryan Wilkins. “It’s hard. It doesn’t give us a lot of practice time.”

Buckfield had one game postponed due to weather last week, but that was little solace for first-year boys’ coach Kyle Rines, who pointed out that teams only have two weeks to prepare for the start of the regular season.

“After tryouts, we had three practices before our first game,” Rines said. “That’s a preseason game, but when you get to games, that’s one less day that you can practice. To me, that’s a big difference. I’d like to have what we had in the past where you’d have at least a week full of practice, seven days, before you have a game. Or at least space them out before the holiday break.”

Rines, who also coaches soccer at Buckfield during the fall, would like to see the two seasons moved up to allow for more practice time in preseason for both.

“I would like to see the fall season start earlier, so maybe one to two weeks earlier in the fall and one to two weeks earlier in the winter,” Rines said.

“I think they should give us a month of practice before we start playing games,” Graffam said. “When I was playing, we started November 1st, no matter what. They didn’t care if football was done or not.”

Not everyone had negative reviews for the busy schedule. Oxford Hills girls’ coach Nate Pelletier said it seems to suit his team just fine. His Vikings are 4-0.

“We’ve got a ton of games coming up. We’ve got to play Thursday, then Saturday, and Tuesday then Thursday,” Pelletier said early last week, before the inclement weather altered the schedule. “They pump all the games up early, I don’t know why, but, hey, we seem to play better when we just play games, so we’ll go for it.”

Inside job

Gray-New Gloucester senior center Skye Conley is adjusting to being the Patriots’ only true inside player this year.

“A year ago we had Alanna Camerl and Ashley Jordan, and they were able to take a little bit of the burden off (Conley),” Patriots coach Mike Andreasen said. “Right now, our four, or our power forward, is Izzy DeTroy, and Izzy is not really a four by definition. So Skye is kind of it, she’s kind of it right now.”

“The nice thing about Skye is she does have a lot of individual post moves,” he added. “We work with her, my assistant coach Matt (Andreasen) works with her a lot on her moves and whatnot. So she’s able to get to the foul line a lot just by being kind of wily and creative. If she can knock down her foul shots, then even that much better. It opens it up, too, for the other shooters.”

Conley scored 11 points (two field goals, 7-of-10 shooting at the free-throw line) on Tuesday against Kennebunk, which ran a zone defense to try and keep the ball away from her.

“The Conley kid is probably the best in the league, in terms of at her position,” Kennebunk coach Rob Sullivan said.

Post with the most

Oxford Hills’ Jadah Adams also is making an impact in the post. Adams is undersized and she’s only a sophomore, but neither height nor inexperienced have affected her significantly in the first four games of the season.

Adams leads the Vikings in scoring with a 12.5 points per game average, and scored a season-high 16 points in their most recent game, a win over Leavitt on Friday.

In a 44-31 win over Edward Little on Tuesday, Adams drew two quick fouls on the Red Eddies’ 6-foot senior post Jordyn Reynolds, completely altering the game before it was two minutes old. Adams made all four free throws that resulted from those fouls and scored the game’s first six points. She finished with 11 in that game, and has scored in double figures in all four contests.

“She plays a lot of minutes for us. It’s going to be a long year for her, at times. But she gives us everything she’s got,” Oxford Hills coach Nate Pelletier said. “She’s a sophomore, undersized, but she’s got broad shoulders and she works her butt off. She’s really good around the hoop. She makes it very difficult on the (opposing) post players as well.”

‘Wow’ Maiwen

One of the reasons Edward Little is off to a 3-0 start is sophomore Wol Maiwen.

At 6-foot-4, Maiwen is the Red Eddies’ not-so-secret weapon, an athletic forward with a 6-foot-8 wing span who comes off the bench and wreaks havoc at the top of coach Mike Adams’ press and in the halfcourt with his length and shot-blocking ability.

Maiwen made an impact on both ends of the floor in last Tuesday’s 54-52 win over Oxford Hills, filling up the stat sheet with six points, five rebounds, four steals and four blocks. He also had a crowd-pleasing dunk that was the exclamation point on a 14-4 third quarter run that put the Red Eddies in front to stay.

“He’s a freak athlete,” senior guard C.J. Jipson said. “A lot of people want to start him but I like him off the bench because of the spark he gives us. You see that dunk and it gets us fired up. That’s what he can bring to us. He brings us some energy, and we can take some risks knowing he’s behind us to block shots.”

Maiwen followed up Tuesday’s performance with another strong effort in Thursday’s 62-54 win over Deering, tallying six points, six rebounds, five blocks and two steals. But he is far from a finished product.

“How many ‘wow’ plays did he make, and then how many times did he make a ‘wow’ play and then turn around and give the ball right back?” Adams said. “He’s a sophomore. He’s 15 years old. He’s a baby. He’s learning. And if we just focus on the mistakes, we’d never really enjoy all of the great plays he makes. He’s come a long way.”

Freshman phenoms

Julia Colby has helped the Oxford Hills girls get off to a 4-0 start to the season, but she isn’t the only freshman point guard who excelled in the season’s first week.

A couple of other freshman points went head-to-head Thursday when Lisbon hosted Oak Hill.

Desirae Dumais scored a game-high 14 points for the Raiders in their 39-35 win. For the Greyhounds, freshman point Giana Russo put up 11 points.

Russo is Lisbon’s second-leading scorer with a 13.3 average. Dumais leads Oak Hill with 29 points in two games.

“She’s just a freshman. She’s got a great head on her shoulders,” Raiders coach Mike Labonte said of Dumais. “She’s got a great temperament. She doesn’t get overly rattled. So it’s going to be fun for the next four years.”

Labonte is excited to see four years of showdowns between Dumais and Russo, with whom he also is familiar.

“I know G pretty well,” Labonte said. “So it will be fun the next four years with the three of us kind of going at it.”

Staff writer Will Kramlich contributed to this story.