FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — The Lady Tigers will face a huge challenge this season as they are the smallest Class C school enrollment-wise and still play a mostly Class D schedule.
This creates an interesting problem as they do not see the teams in their class and it makes it much more difficult to judge where they stand against their potential tournament competition.
The Tiger girls will look to improve on last year’s season where they finished with a 7-11 record. They did make it to the postseason, but lost in a preliminary playoff game to the Woodland Dragons.
This year’s squad comes out with very little varsity experience and very little overall team height. Despite those factors, they will look to keep a 19-year playoff streak alive.
Larry Gardner begins his 20th year as head coach and he will challenge his players to give maximum effort each day while trying to blend the returning players with the younger, newer players on the team.
The returning players from last year’s team include five seniors: Emma Campbell, Sadie Edgecomb, Sara Edgecomb, Hunter St. Pierre and Kayla Tisdale. Others back from last year are sophomores Cammi King-Demerchant, Bailee Mallett, Amber Sherwood and Riley Clough.
The Tigers are small overall, but measuring 6 feet, 2 inches, Clough is one of the tallest girls in Aroostook County and she will be counted on to continue with the improvement she made last year. All five seniors should see plenty of court time, while King-DeMerchant was one of the team’s most dependable scorers last year as a freshman.
The new additions are juniors Emma Holton and Emilee Kennedy and freshmen Brenna LeVasseur, Hunter Perkins, Kourtney West and Kennedy Bencivenga.
West and Bencivenga come over from the now defunct Limestone High School. They showed solid athletic ability in the recently completed soccer season and should be nice additions to the squad.
“All of these newcomers could see a lot of playing time but it will depend on how well they progress and how well they adjust to the speed and quickness of the high school game,” Gardner said.
The coach is upbeat about the season despite the challenges the team faces.
“We always expect to compete with everyone we play against,” Gardner said. “This team will work hard and wants to return to Bangor this year but they will have to learn each other’s strengths and build some team chemistry to be able to compete.
He said the team will need to focus a lot more on fundamentals such as boxing out because of the lack of size.
“We have a lot of areas to work on and will continue to try to improve each practice and game,” he said. “Our goal is to take one game at a time and compete as hard as we can for that game.
Gardner said that his team’s Class C opponents during the regular season are Fort Kent and Central Aroostook, while Shead, Katahdin, Easton, Hodgdon and Ashland will all provide tough competition as Class D opponents.
He feels Houlton is the favorite to win the division, while Calais, Dexter, Narraguagus and Madawaska also have strong teams and will be contenders.
Gardner said the Tigers do feature quickness and intensity that will give other teams a hard time.
“We will push the ball when the opportunity arises, and will also try to create offense with defensive pressure,” Gardner said. “I think we could surprise some teams.”
