Induction ceremony for PIHS athletic shrine
slated for Jan. 15
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — The Presque Isle High School Athletic Hall of Fame will have an induction ceremony for its five newest members Friday, Jan. 15, 2016 at the Northeastland Hotel. The dinner is at 6 p.m., following a social at 5:15 p.m. The ceremony will take place directly following the dinner. For ticket information, call 764-6507.
Bios of the five inductees — Jack Belden, John Dean, Natasha Deschene, Dana Hews and Don Kilpatrick — are as follows:
Jack Belden
Belden is credited with organizing the effort to make hockey a varsity sport at Presque Isle High School in the early 1990s.
Belden led a group known as the Presque Isle Hockey Supporters, which was called upon to raise nearly $100,000 to fund the program for its first three seasons before the school district would take over and fully support it financially.
Direct donations from corporations and organizations were solicited and a hockey week was held to raise a bulk of the funds.
“We scraped the barrel at times for the rest of the money — everything from selling hot dogs and soda at soccer and baseball games to bottle drives, a spaghetti dinner and 50-50 ticket sales,” Belden was quoted in an article that appeared in The Star-Herald. “We ran the gamut in terms of fundraising, not only to get the money we needed in place, but also to increase the visibility of the program.”
Hockey became an official varsity sport at Presque Isle High School during the 1991-92 school year.
Wildcat hockey has been a successful program in the Class B ranks over the past 23-plus years, making the playoffs most seasons and even earning an Eastern Maine championship in 2009.
John Dean (Class of 1978)
Dean was an outstanding basketball and baseball player with the Wildcats, playing each sport three years. He enjoyed a dominant senior year. In basketball, he made the All-Aroostook First Team, the Bangor Daily News All-State Second Team and the Eastern Maine All-Tournament Team.
As a baseball player, Dean made the All-Aroostook Team and received the James Dyer Memorial Trophy as the outstanding player in Aroostook County. He batted 400, led the Wildcats in hits (22), runs (20) and runs batted in (25).
Dean was also an academic standout and was inducted into the National Honor Society his junior year.
He attended the University of Maine at Farmington and played both basketball and baseball throughout. He is sixth on the all-time Beaver assist list and finished with 660 career points and 356 rebounds. He was an all-conference choice in 1979-80. On the baseball diamond, Dean pitched and played first base and carried a 7-5 career pitching record and a .263 batting average. He made the all-conference team as pitcher his senior year. Dean was inducted into the UMF Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003.
A certified basketball official since 1989, Dean is a systems consultant at Unum Life Insurance in Portland.
Natasha Deschene (Class of 2005)
Deschene was one of the top all-around athletes to every attend PIHS. She lettered in soccer, basketball and tennis all four years and was a standout in all 3 sports, capping her career with the Outstanding Senior Athlete Award.
In soccer, she was two-time Maine Soccer Coaches Eastern Maine Class B All-Star and was an All-State honorable mention. She made the Penobscot Valley Conference second team as a junior and the first team as a senior and she was All-Aroostook three years. Deschene was the recipient of the Butch Shaw Memorial Award as the top Aroostook County player in Class B.
For basketball, she made the Big East All-Conference first team her junior and senior seasons after gaining honorable mention as a sophomore. As a senior, she was named Big East Conference Player of the Year, was selected to the Bangor Daily News All-State Third Team and was voted to play in the Maine McDonald’s Senior All-Star Game.
On the tennis court, as the Wildcats’ first singles player, she made All-Aroostook her final three years and was a state singles tournament finalist as a senior.
Deschene excelled academically, making the National Honor Society as a junior and graduating in the top 10 of her class. She garnered academic awards all four years. She went on to Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and played point guard for the Div. III Engineers, helping the team to the Eastern College Athletic Conference championship. She set a school record for the most minutes played her senior year and finished with career averages of 7.1 points and 5.6 rebounds per game.
She is currently a senior engineer for National Grid and resides in Marlborough, Mass.
Dana Hews
Hews is known as one of the founding fathers of soccer in Aroostook County. He became familiar with the sport while studying physical education while attending Springfield College and made soccer a part of the physical education program at Presque Isle High School in 1963. His best sport at Presque Isle High School was baseball, but he also played a year of basketball and a year of football.
Working closely with Caribou High School Athletic Director Dwight Hunter, he helped organize a Presque Isle vs. Caribou soccer game in 1964, which was the first one ever played in Aroostook County. A league began that fall that included teams from Presque Isle, Caribou, Fort Fairfield and Fort Kent and Hews was the first Wildcat coach. He spent six years at the position.
Hews grew up on a potato farm in Ashland and became a longtime educator, coach, guidance counselor, athletic director, principal and basketball official. He began his education career in Ashland, serving as a teacher and coach, and then moved on to Presque Isle High School, where he organized the physical education and health programs for all grades.
At PIHS, he coached the Wildcat boys’ basketball team to the 1961 Eastern Maine title. Hews went on to become an outstanding basketball official.
He and his wife, Virginia, have seven children and many went into coaching.
Don Kilpatrick (Class of 1938)
Kilpatrick enters the PIHS Athletic Hall of Fame posthumously after a brilliant career both at the high school and collegiate levels. His best sport at Presque Isle High School was baseball, but he also played a year of basketball and a year of football.
He led his team to the state baseball tournament as a junior and was an offensive catalyst and an excellent defensive center fielder. He spent the summer pitching for the American Junior Legion team.
Kilpatrick was a National Honor Society student, played in the band and orchestra and was the senior class president.
A brilliant student, he began his collegiate studies at the University of Maine at Orono at the age of 16. He also played football, basketball and baseball for the Black Bears and during his baseball playing days was known as the “smoothest fielding first sackers the university has had” by sportswriter Jack Moran.
Following his college graduation, Kilpatrick enlisted in the military and served his country as a bomber pilot, flying missions over France and Germany, including one on the day of the great Allied Normandy Invasion. While returning from his 15th bombing mission over Bernburg, Germany, his plane was hit by cannon fire. He was able to bail out but was later killed as a result of the battle.
The Donald Kilpatrick Memorial Trophy was established by the Northern Aroostook League in 1946 to be presented to the Aroostook League baseball champion every year.
