HAMPDEN, Maine — Things couldn’t have been going worse for the Hampden Academy boys basketball team last Saturday.
A berth in the Class A state final was at stake, and a fast-breaking Lewiston squad was doing its best impersonation of the Los Angeles Lakers of “Showtime” days at the Broncos’ expense.
Twenty-one consecutive points had turned an eight-point Hampden lead into a 13-point Lewiston advantage midway through the third quarter — a turn of events that might crack the resilience of any athlete, let alone 16- and 17-year-olds.
But not this day, and not this team.
Not only did Hampden withstand the onslaught, the Broncos reversed the game’s course within minutes. The team ended Lewiston’s run with 15 unanswered points of its own and outscored the Blue Devils 30-9 the rest of the way to secure a 65-57 victory and become the first Eastern Maine Class A boys basketball team to win four straight regional championships.
“A lot of it is mental because you have to have the mindset where you think you’re going to win every game you’re in,” said Hampden junior guard Nick Gilpin. “We expect to win when we play at home, we expect to win when we’re on the road, and our crowd thinks we’re going to win so we’re trying to win for them and for every player who has played for Hampden.”
Such mental toughness, physical skills and player development from the youth levels and up are at the core of Hampden’s rise to the top of the Eastern A ranks.
Since Russ Bartlett became the head coach at his alma mater 12 years ago, Hampden is 191-59 with six Eastern Maine titles, Class A state championships in 2005 and 2013, and the chance for a third gold ball when the team faces Portland on Saturday night at the Augusta Civic Center.
Not bad for one of the state’s smaller Class A schools — which hadn’t won a regional title since 1982 when competing in Class B.
“Expectations are high for us, and we know that, but that’s what we work for in the offseason,” said Hampden junior guard Jake Black. “Going into each season, expectations are to bring home the gold ball, and there is a lot pressure with that, but it really helps push us to get to a higher level.”
A homecoming
Bartlett competed for Hampden when expectations weren’t nearly as high.
“I can tell you as someone who played here in [1995] that it was just exciting to try to get into the tournament,” he said. “That was all you really expected, and you might have one big crowd a year against Bangor. Now we have big crowds for every game, and making the tournament isn’t anything we ever discuss. We talk about winning the gold ball and winning that last game.
“Some years that’s realistic and some years it’s not, but we want to keep our goals high,” he added.
Bartlett, 38, broke into coaching at age 20 at Mars Hill Middle School. Then the Newburgh native moved up to the high school ranks, first as an assistant at Caribou and then back at Hampden as the freshman coach for two years and the junior varsity coach in 2002-03.
A year later, the varsity job opened up, and once Bartlett was hired, he immediately began addressing the program’s personality.
The Broncos went 8-10 in their first season under Bartlett, a debut that was not without such growing pains as technical fouls and player suspensions.
“Obviously we want to win, but we want to do it the right way, and we want the kids to represent us in a positive way,” he said. “That’s something that’s emphasized year in and year out, and I think since then, we’ve had fewer behavior problems on the floor, and I think the kids have been fantastic about understanding what’s important.
“That second year, we had zero technical fouls,” he said.
The four juniors on Bartlett’s senior-less first team — current assistant coach Tyler Ross, Pat Moran, Josh McNutt and captain Blaine Meehan — teamed in 2005 with 6-foot-10-inch junior Jordan Cook to lead Hampden to its first state championship, a postseason run that began as the No. 9 seed in the regional tournament.
The Broncos followed that up with a second straight Eastern Maine title in 2006, and a tone of competitiveness had been established.
“We always talk about doing your job, and that job is valued whether it’s guarding, whether it’s helping prepare in practice or whether it’s scoring,” said Bartlett. “Understanding what’s valued by the coaches is something the kids understand, and if they do the things that are valued, they can find a role.”
For some, that role includes team leadership, a facet of responsibility influenced by sources as far away as Durham, North Carolina.
Required reading for Hampden boys basketball captains is the book “Beyond Basketball: Coach K’s Keywords for Success,” written by Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski.
“Coach Bartlett emphasizes that the game’s really beyond basketball and how everything outside of basketball as well as on the court translates into real life and becoming a better man,” said Black. “That book teaches you that it’s not just about you. It’s about the whole team coming together and that you can rely on each other to get through tough moments.”
Each Hampden captain signs the 192-page book after reading it, and the list is filled with the names of top Broncos of the last decade.
“I’ve seen all those players who have come through Hampden basketball and been great leaders on this team and been very successful,” said Hampden junior forward Brendan McIntyre. “It’s a great honor to be able to put our names on that list and know that five or 10 years from now, coach will have his captains putting their names on that list and looking up to us.”
Bartlett expects his captains to share the lessons learned from that book with their teammates.
“It gives them some ownership, and it’s really just based on leadership and what we expect from our kids,” he said. “If you’ve got good leaders, then you can really rely on them to take care of the small issues as far as working hard in practice and carrying yourself the proper way.
“If we’re going to go to battle, we need everyone on the same page, and that’s something we’ve really emphasized over the years,” he added.
Players and opportunities
While Hampden’s current run — the Broncos are 82-5 since the start of the 2011-12 season — can be credited in part to strong team leadership and competitive grace under pressure, the program also has boasted considerable talent.
Five players during Bartlett’s tenure have been finalists for the state’s Mr. Basketball award, with guard Christian McCue winning in 2012.
Another Mr. Basketball finalist, Zach Gilpin, was named the state’s 2014 Gatorade Player of the Year, while Cook (2006), Graham Safford (2011) and Isaiah Bess (2014) also have played key roles, as did Jacob Moore, a 2010 Bangor Daily News All-Maine selection.
“You’ve got to have high-end players, but you’ve also got to have good players around them, and we’ve been extremely fortunate not only to have high-end players but great role players,” said Bartlett. “Guys who have been under the radar like the Max Silvers and the Evan Farleys of the world who go out there and play a role or a Brian Fickett who helped us win big basketball games that maybe aren’t state-sheet stuffers, but what they do is extremely important to our success.”
While Safford and Bess transferred to Hampden during their high school years, the development of other Hampden stars and role players has stemmed from an active youth basketball effort, Bronco Travel, as well as a strong middle-school program and opportunities to compete at the AAU level.
“There’s got to be some parent involvement at those lower levels and rec levels,” said Bartlett. “We’ve had some great parents about that and consequently the kids have played a lot of basketball when they step on the floor for us.”
That background applies to the heart of this year’s team. Four junior starters, Nick Gilpin, Black, Conor Moore and McIntyre, have been on the varsity roster since their freshman season and were teammates on various travel and pre-high school teams.
“They say Lawrence [of Fairfield] is a football town, other towns are soccer towns, and I think Hampden is definitely a basketball town,” said Moore. “And above that, we’re definitely a competitive town. At young ages we start playing basketball and form connections with our future teammates, then we come to the high school and realize that a team here started winning and created a prideful environment for us so we want to strive to get there.”
And while players past and present and the communities they represent savor opportunities such as Saturday night’s rematch with Portland — the Bulldogs defeated the Broncos 54-40 in last year’s title game — Bartlett derives satisfaction from several facets of his role.
“I think the thing I’m most proud of are the men that have left our program that were boys when they started,” he said. “They’re well out of high school now, but they come to our games still, they swing by and say hi or shoot me a text on a big-game night. Hopefully we impacted them from a relationship standpoint with something that was really positive for them, and I think if we did that that would make me the most proud.
“Obviously hanging banners in our gym makes me proud, but the bottom line is I want good kids who are going to be good people after high school and represent themselves and their families in a real positive way,” he said.
