Lisbon’s Jonah Sautter drives past Mountain Valley’s Taylor Pelletier and banks one in for two points during the first half of a game in Lisbon this season. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)
With his final point in last Thursday’s game against Mountain Valley, Lisbon senior Jonah Sautter joined an exclusive club. With his first point against Oak Hill on Wednesday, he will stand alone.
He hopes it won’t be for long, though.
Sautter became the second player to join Lisbon’s 1,000-point club against Mountain Valley. At Boothbay last Saturday night, he scored 14 points to tie the other member of the club, Dave Bubar, as the school’s all-time leading scorer.
Sautter said joining the club didn’t seem possible his first three years, but he made sure to savor it as he drew closer to the milestone.
“When that moment actually creeps up on you and actually happens, and you actually accomplish those things that you’ve always been dreaming of, it’s a pretty neat feeling,” he said.
Sautter and Lisbon coach Jake Gentle celebrated the milestone as a team accomplishment and hope it inspires others to follow in Sautter and Bubar’s footsteps.
“Like I tell the guys,” Gentle said, “it’s an individual goal but it takes the past four years of the team playing together and playing well offensively for guys to have that opportunity. It also takes him having the dedication to work on his game over four years. His game has evolved a lot from his freshman year.”
“When I came into high school I knew that one person had done it before myself,” Sautter said. “Being the second person up there (on the 1,000-point club banner), when I come back 10 years from now, I want to see three or four more people on the wall, because that’s a great accomplishment for Lisbon. When eighth graders come in as freshmen, I want them to see those names on the wall and see that it can be done and that Lisbon basketball is something that you can achieve your own goals.”
Sautter will have another goal in mind on Wednesday — a much-needed win to bolster the Greyhounds’ chances of making the Class B South playoffs. They are currently one spot removed from a tournament berth, trailing Lake Region by less than four-tenths of a Heal point.
‘EL might be OK’
The Edward Little girls became the first team to defeat South Portland, the Class AA South leader, by winning 45-44 on Saturday.
“We were definitely underestimated,” sophomore guard Hannah Chaput said, “and anyone can beat any team if you work together, honestly.”
Head coach Chris Cifelli stressed the second part of Chaput’s statement after the game.
“I hope it shows the kids that on any given night, not only can you win a game, but also, if you look at it from another perspective, you can also lose,” Cifelli said. “So you really do have to bring your best every night, especially in February, everyone is trying to knock you off.”
Cifelli also said that the win should give the Red Eddies added confidence, but if they were in fact underestimated, they no longer are after Tuesday’s big win.
“Things are going to change a little bit,” he said. “We’re the team that knocked off South Portland, so (now other teams will say), ‘EL might be OK,’ so hopefully we can start to play with that confidence of being maybe a little bit more hunted now as opposed to maybe lying in the weeds.”
Edward Little (11-5) is currently third in the Class AA North Heal point standings with two games left.
Playing time
The Monmouth girls’ finished their regular season with a dominating 63-24 win over Mountain Valley on Saturday.
The wide margin allowed the Mustangs (17-1) coach Scott Wing to empty his bench and play 14 players. The downside to that is that it has happened a lot this season. Only three of their games had a final margin of fewer than 20 points, and only two — a 50-47 loss to Boothbay and a 53-48 win over Madison — were decided by fewer than 15 points.
The past three or four games, Wing said, seniors Tia Day, Abbey Allen or Hannah Anderson haven’t played at all in the fourth quarter.
So, while Wing was going deep on his bench, he also kept one senior on the court until the final two or three minutes.
“That’s why I kind of kept one in at a time, so it wasn’t like I was throwing all my starters back out there,” Wing said. “That’s the only reason why, because they’ve sat out probably at least a third of every game this year. And it’s not fair to them because they’ve worked hard to get to where they are, but we also have to make sure we’re not trying to run it up on people.”
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