By Joseph Cyr
Sports Editor
CARIBOU — Mastering one sport is difficult enough for a high school competitor, so it’s a rarity to find an athlete who excels in three varsity sports.
Enter Caribou High School’s Jenna Selander.
Selander, who is about to embark on her senior season for the Vikings, has excelled in soccer, basketball and tennis for the Vikings and also showed her versatility this past year by competing in track and field after many years away from the sport.
And if her junior campaign was any indication, a successful senior season awaits.
The 17-year-old daughter of Arthur and Linda Selander, Jenna naturally gravitated toward sports. Growing up in an athletic family, watching her older siblings compete in various events, helped introduce Selander to sports at an early age. Her older sister Monica was a standout basketball player at CHS, scoring 1,000 points in her career. Monica went on to play basketball in college.
Her older brother Stephen excelled in soccer, basketball and wrestling. Her younger brother Michael is also an avid wrestler, baseball and soccer player.
Jenna got her first exposure to competitive sports when she tagged along at her sister’s basketball practice with her father. Seeing her sister hone her skills on the court provided Jenna all the incentive she needed to succeed.
“From the time I was real little, playing sports in the rec program was something I enjoyed,” she said. “It was always about sports for me.”
Her varsity basketball coach for three seasons, Bill Schofield describes Selander as a “special athlete” and “outstanding teammate and human being.”
“Jenna is always at the ready to help her teammates in any way on or off the court,” Schofield said. “She is there to help the incoming freshmen, when we had any, to help them acclimate to the new, faster, more physical game.”
“It shows you what kind of athlete you have when you have someone succeed in three sports,” Caribou soccer coach Todd Albert added.
In the spring, Selander helped the Viking tennis team to an Eastern Class B trophy and an appearance in the state finals, where Caribou fell 5-0 to Falmouth. At the state singles tournament, Selander was seeded eighth in the state and reached the quarterfinals before falling to Falmouth’s Analise Kump 6-4, 6-4. 
As Caribou’s No. 1 singles player, Selander shouldered the arduous task of facing the opposition’s best player. It’s a role she relished as she went undefeated during the regular season. In fact, her only losses on the court were to Kump in the singles tournament and the state finals.
Selander put on an epic display at the state team championship, playing against Kump in a match that lasted more than three hours.
“I put up a pretty good fight in the singles tourney, so I wasn’t too worried about facing her in states,” she said. “I figured she was the one that had everything to lose, while I had everything to gain. She was supposed to win, while I just went out and tried the best I could.”
Selander nearly pulled off the upset too, falling 6-3, 3-6, 6-7.
Longtime tennis coach John Habeeb called the match “one of the best” he had seen played all year as Selander used her natural athletic ability and “grittiness” to take one of the top players in the state to the brink.
“Our coach [John Habeeb] is such a great coach,” she said. “He always kept practices fun, but it was also serious. He knows his stuff and passes that knowledge on to us.”
Selander’s accomplishments on the tennis court are all the more impressive when considering she has not taken a single formal lesson.
“Tennis has always been just for fun for me,” she said. “At first, it was an extra sport for me to do, until sixth grade when I became more serious about it. Tennis is a fun sport, with a lot less stress.”
Selander said staying mentally focused is the hardest aspect of playing tennis.
“Tennis is such a mental game,” she said. “If you can get inside the other person’s head, they start breaking down, hitting the ball into the net. Staying calm is the key.”
Her serve is probably her biggest strength on the court.
“My mom and I would go to the tennis courts to practice serves and I would try hitting it as hard as I could,” she said. “I’d probably get one or two in out of 200. But I slowly gained more accuracy.”
This past spring, Selander decided to compete on the Vikings track and field team in addition to her duties with tennis. Fellow Viking Laura Collins also competed in both sports and encouraged her to give track a try.
“I just wanted to see if I could still do some of the events and maybe help the team out a little bit,” she said. “Laura really helped me out with keeping my schedule organized and our coaches were very understanding too.”
Selander competed in the high jump, javelin, discus, 100 meter and 200 and qualified for the state meet in both the high jump and javelin.
On the basketball court, Selander plays the role of point guard to perfection. For her, scoring is not the end-all, as she is equally satisfied dishing out assists as she is taking the ball to the hoop.
“I enjoy making great passes,” she said. “I love watching [Boston Celtic] Rajon Rondo make amazing passes. When I am on the court, I try to look for the open player and get them the ball.”
“When it comes down to winning or losing she will always strive to succeed even if it means she is not in the spotlight,” Schofield said. “There were many times in the past three years when I asked Jenna to guard a more powerful, taller center and go down to the other end and be the go-to person over and over again. Even when exhausted, she is still working harder then any other player on the court. I believe she does not really know how good she really is because she is so down to earth. She never wants to take the credit for a win, but is always there to take the blame for a loss.”
One of her best moves on the court is the reverse layup. In a regular season game in Houlton, Selander scored the first six points of the game via her signature shot.
“I love the reverse layup,” she said. “It has just become second nature for me. They [opponents] don’t expect it. They think once I go baseline past the basket that I am going to pass the ball.”
The Vikings finished as the ninth seed in Eastern Class B and earned a preliminary playoff against No. 8 Waterville. In that contest, Selander netted half of her team’s points (18), but it was not enough as Caribou fell 62-32.
Her goal for basketball this year is to make it to the Bangor Auditorium for a playoff game.
“My dream is to play there in a tournament game,” she said. “The atmosphere there is so amazing.”
A striker in soccer, Selander has started on varsity since her freshman year and led the Vikings in scoring for the past two seasons. She scored 18 goals and added nine assists in her junior year and had 18 goals and six assists her sophomore season. Those 18 goals are one shy of the school record of 19 for a single season.
“Jenna is one of the most athletic girls I have coached,” coach Albert said. “She is also a very unselfish player. She does a great job distributing the ball and knows where it should be going.”
“I started out as defensive player my freshman year, but still scored a few times,” she said. “I wanted to be a striker, so I worked hard at it and achieved that goal my sophomore year.”
Her favorite personal moment in sports was beating cross-town rival Presque Isle 2-1 in the Eastern Class B semifinals last fall in a game decided on penalty kicks.
“Everything we practiced for happened in that game,” she said. “All the PK [penalty kicks] we practiced, all the running we did because we missed PKs, it all paid off in that game.”
Age: 17Grade: Senior at Caribou High School
Parents: Arthur and Linda Selander
Town: Caribou
Favorite personal moment in sports: Defeating Presque Isle in the Eastern Class B soccer semifinals in penalty kicks.
Hobbies: Sports, drawing, design
Favorite athlete: Christiano Ronaldo
Favorite food: Anything my mom makes
Favorite movie: All comedies
Favorite actor/actress: Robert Pattinson
Favorite book: The Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer
People you would most like to meet (alive or dead): The cast of “Friends”
Vehicle you wish you were driving: A Range Rover
Most influential person(s) in your life: My parents
Future plans: To continue playing sports in college.
