When a high school’s football team advances deep into the playoffs, its boys basketball team typically starts its subsequent season in sluggish fashion — with the transition often not truly completed until after Christmas break.
Players who compete on both squads need time to heal up from the aches and pains accumulated from spending autumn on the gridiron as well as a chance to adjust to the different physical conditioning required for a winter on the hardwood.
But there are exceptions.
Winslow High School stormed to the Class C football state championship this fall, completing an undefeated season with a 62-14 victory over Leavitt of Turner Center in the title game on Nov. 21.
Three days later, players from that team were participating in the Black Raiders’ first basketball preseason scrimmage, and that team is 10-0 and ranked atop the Eastern Maine Class B standings after Tuesday night’s 76-50 victory at Leavitt.
“We scrimmaged Old Town the Monday after the state game, and the football guys suited up and played,” said Winslow coach Jared Browne. “It took maybe a week, a week and a half. They’re good athletes, and they play year-round.”
That year-round effort even included time spent on the basketball court during football season for some of Winslow’s multisport players, among them 6-foot-6 senior Justin Martin, a two-way standout for coach Mike Siviski’s football team who played AAU basketball on Sundays during the autumn.
“It did actually take a couple of weeks to adjust, and my shot still isn’t where I want it to be,” said Martin, who nevertheless scored 26 points and made four of Winslow’s 13 3-pointers in the win over Leavitt after a 7-of-13 shooting effort during last Friday’s 62-45 showdown victory over Medomak Valley of Waldoboro. “I’ve just got to work on it every day in practice.
“It’s definitely a harder transition since we went to states and the [football] season was so long, but it’s definitely good and it’s getting better. I’m having fun with it,” he said.
Martin — who along with senior point guard Nason Lanphier played on the Maine Athletic Club AAU basketball team that finished 11th in the AAU 11th-Grade National Championships over the summer — is one of several Winslow football-basketball players. That cast also includes senior forward Bobby Chenard, junior guard Trenton Bouchard and sophomore guard Dylan Hutchinson.
“I’d say it took about a week and a half for them to get the conditioning back, but they’re smart players,” said Browne. “They came all summer, and we’re basically running the same stuff we did all summer, so they adjusted pretty quickly.”
That group has teamed with Lanphier, fellow seniors Colby Robertson and Josh Kervin, junior Justin Burgher and sophomore Keanu Earle to lead the Black Raiders to the top of the Eastern B standings at the midpoint of the basketball season thanks in part to its recent showdown victory over Medomak Valley.
“It was the biggest game of the season so far,” said Martin. “They were No. 1, and we were below them even though we were undefeated and they weren’t, but it still was a huge game.”
Winslow has been ousted in the Eastern B quarterfinals each of the last two years and last advanced to the semifinals in 2011.
