The year was 2012, and Aaron Toman couldn’t believe it.
He and his teammates on the Gardiner boys basketball team had just won the school’s first ever Eastern Maine regional championship in Bangor.
“It’s crazy. I can’t explain it,” said Toman, a center on that historically good Tigers team. “To be the first team that’s done it, it’s unreal.”
Well nearly 15 years later, Toman hasn’t lost that sense of wondrous incredulity.
That’s because his Tigers have once again made history, this time with Toman on the bench as head coach.
No Gardiner boys team, not even Toman’s 2012 squad, had ever won a state championship. Not until Friday night at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor, that is.
In a twist of fate, this year’s Class B North regional champion Tigers found themselves facing South champ Yarmouth in the state title game — the same matchup from the 2012 state championship that Yarmouth went on to win.
But an unshakable performance down the stretch by this year’s Gardiner team earned the Tiger boys their first-ever state championship.
That history, and his multifaceted connection to it, wasn’t lost on Toman after Friday night’s victory. But he hadn’t had time to process the magnitude of it quite yet.
“I’ll take some time tonight — this will be a late night — but tonight, over the weekend, and truly try to enjoy it and let it sink in,” Toman said. “I’m kind of speechless right now. I’m just blessed and very, very lucky to be in the position I’m in.”
His players feel lucky, too. Lucky to have a coach who knows what it’s like to be on the floor in those big moments.
“He is inspirational. He gets us all pumped up and ready to go,” senior guard Brady Peacock said Friday night, not long after his several buckets late in the fourth quarter helped keep Yarmouth at bay. “And he has full belief in us.”
Other coaches believe in Toman, as well. He was named Class B North boys basketball coach of the year this season by the Maine Association of Basketball Coaches.
“He just has so much faith in us,” senior forward Brady Atwater said about Toman earlier in the postseason tournament. “We just want to bring it against everybody.”
And they brought it once again in Friday night’s 58-54 win.
Toman said it definitely felt like a full-circle moment to get the historic victory while coaching the team he played for in high school.
“I feel like I’m the luckiest guy in the world, to have a community that supports you through thick and thin, and just values you,” the Gardiner coach said. “And I love this community with all my heart. It meant so much to me growing up, and I’m just lucky to be able to try to give back, doing things I love.”
He was overflowing with pride for the players who got it done for Gardiner in the championship and all season long.
“They’ve stayed with it. They’ve worked so hard. They’ve bought into the team-first mentality,” Toman said about the Gardiner players. “I am just so happy for all of them, to be the first group in Gardiner boys basketball history to ever do that. First Gold Ball, it’s tremendous. And it could not have happened to a better group of young men.”