Several girls soccer players from Stearns High School in Millinocket have a new home for the 2016 season as part of a cooperative varsity team with Lee Academy.
A small number of Stearns players participated in a cooperative team with neighboring Schenck of East Millinocket two years ago, and at that time, the team was granted a waiver to remain in Class D despite the schools’ combined enrollment being greater than the cutoff for Class C.
That waiver went away last fall, but two Stearns players were grandfathered to play on the Schenck varsity team without the team having to move up a class while other Stearns players competed at the junior varsity level.
During the offseason, the local school board that oversees Schenck opted to end its cooperative status with Stearns in girls soccer, concerned that a move up to Class C would put the team at a competitive disadvantage.
Schenck has 134 students according to enrollment figures used by the Maine Principals’ Association to place teams under the current two-year statewide classification cycle while Stearns has 181, bringing that two-school total to 315 — well above the 189-student maximum to play Class D soccer.
“Stearns doesn’t have a team,” said Lee Academy athletic administrator Randy Harris. “They co-oped with Schenck a couple of years ago, but that fell through, and they’ve got some girls who play soccer and still enjoy it, and they were looking for a way to get their girls back playing.”
Stearns athletic administrator Freddy Lazo said an initial signup suggested that five to seven girls soccer players from his school were interested in joining the cooperative team at Lee. But with transportation issues to get the players to and from practice still to be resolved, the number of Stearns players that ultimately will turn out for the start of preseason practices in mid-August has not yet been determined.
Harris said Lee Academy’s girls soccer roster typically numbers in the mid- to upper teens.
The Lee-Stearns girls soccer cooperative will compete in Class B North this fall, the final year of the classification cycle, as the combined enrollment for those schools is 417. Class C soccer involves schools with enrollments between 190 and 399.
There remains a possibility that Stearns and Lee also will field a cooperative entry in football this fall, but no one from Lee has yet signed up to join the established Stearns football team.
“We had a couple of kids thinking about it, and we talked about it and had several meetings and put sign-up sheets up and told kids to make sure to sign up so we could get hold of them over the summer,” Harris said. “But we had zero kids sign up.
“We’re hoping now that once fall rolls around and preseason starts that maybe somebody will decide they want to,” he added.
The addition of Lee players to the Stearns football roster would not move the Minutemen out of Class D North. Stearns is the smallest football-playing school in the state, and the addition of Lee’s enrollment would still leave the cooperative team with less than the maximum 459 students for a Class D football school.
“If kids want to play, the opportunity is there,” said Lazo, a former football player at the University of Maine. “If they don’t want to take advantage of it, it is what it is.”
Former Bangor coach takes Biddeford post
Katie Herbine, a former basketball standout at Bangor High School who went on to coach the sport at her alma mater, is the new girls varsity basketball coach at Biddeford High School.
Herbine, the former Katie Clark, played for Bangor during the mid-1990s and twice was named to the Bangor Daily News All-Maine team.
She went on to play at the University of Maine, where she served as a team co-captain and as a junior in 1999 was part of the only UMaine women’s basketball team to win an NCAA tournament game.
Herbine was the girls varsity basketball coach at Bangor for four seasons before resigning in February 2014. She guided the Rams to a 43-36 record during a run that was highlighted by an Eastern Maine Class A championship in 2013.
Her teams also qualified for postseason play in 2011 and 2012.
Herbine, who lives in Saco, inherits a rebuilding job at Biddeford, which last qualified for postseason play in 2010.
Biddeford has gone 23-85 in the six seasons since that tourney berth, including a 2-16 record last winter in Class A South.
