Golden Spring

Let's wrap up spring sports!

After a successful Waldoboro Day 5K (I'm the race director), I headed immediately to Standish to catch the B and D state games. How immediately? The turn-by-turn signs are still up around town, like a candidate who flamed out in the primary.

St. Joseph's was an event on Saturday. Besides the state games, the town was lousy with bikers for the Trek Across Maine and there was apparently a wedding on campus. Traffic was fun.

Up first was Medomak and Gardiner in the B softball game. The regular season meeting between the two, a 17-16 win by Gardiner, was one of the great outliers of the regular season and I'm not sure you could have found anyone who thought the game would get into double digits, even for a total. But when Molly Takatsu doubled off Sidney Nicholls with one out, you might wonder if we were in for a high-scoring game. But like she's done with every other (rare) runner she's allowed all playoffs, Nicholls stranded Takatsu.

Medomak's bats then went to work. The Panthers scored in each of the first 3 innings as Nicholls pitched around some walks while she worked through a back injury and then broke it open in the 4th with RBI doubles from Jennika Schumann and freshman Mckenna Hertel.

Nicholls finished with 9 strikeouts against 5 hits allowed as she posted a shutout for the entire playoffs. Freshman leadoff hitter Rheanne Simmons went 3-for-3 with a Willie Mays web gem she didn't fully appreciate the history of.

The Panthers won 7-0 to go back-to-back. And between Nicholls only being a junior and Gardiner being, by all accounts, a year ahead of schedule, it's not impossible that we could get this same matchup next year.

In Class A, Addison DeRoche struck out 15 Hampden batters and had seemingly shut the door on a 7th inning rally when the umpires ruled Piper Parker out at second base. Cheverus began their celebration, only to have the umps confer and determine that Parker was safe at second, actually, because of obstruction.

Cheverus stopped the celebration, picked up their gloves and whatever off the ground, and DeRoche struck out batter number 15 to end the game again and clinch the Stags' undefeated season.

Cheverus softball edges Hampden Academy to complete undefeated season

The Stags survive the Broncos’ final threat in the seventh inning to win their second Class A title in three years.

The Portland Press HeraldDrew BonifantStaff Writer

For the consensus top team in the entire state, Gorham's playoffs have been...an adventure, to say the least.

Naturally, they couldn't just win a Gold Ball. No...that would be too easy. They had to make it difficult.

The Rams outlasted Bangor in 11 innings to claim their first title in 21 years.

Gorham caps one-of-a-kind championship run with extra inning victory over Bangor

After waiting 21 years to reach the mountaintop, needing four additional innings to beat Bangor in the Class A state final didn’t faze Gorham’s baseball team in the slightest Saturday afternoon at Morton Field in Augusta. And the end result was a coronation and celebration which won’t

Hoffer's High School SportsMichael Hoffer

Back at St. Joe's for the B Baseball game, Cony got off to a great start. Anderson Noyes and Parker Morin led off the game with a double and a single, respectively, and the Rams raced out to a 2-0 lead. But Fryeburg answered. Noah Day hit a 2-out single and scored on David Rosales' double. Then Brady Chappell homered to left and suddenly Fryeburg led 3-2. It's a lead they wouldn't relinquish. Oliver Dean settled down on the mound. At one point he retired 11 straight before a 2-out error in the 7th put the tying run on base. But he got Noyes to line out to left to give Fryeburg their first baseball title in 43 years.

After the game I caught up with the winning pitcher.

The scene after a school snaps a long title drought is always fantastic.

In C, Monmouth rallied in the 7th to beat Washington Academy for the second year in a row. Levi Laverdiere went the distance and scored the winning run.

Monmouth Academy baseball repeats in Class C with 7th-inning rally

The Mustangs knock off Washington Academy in a rematch of last year’s title game.

The Portland Press HeraldCooper SullivanStaff Writer

And in D, Fort Fairfield won the first baseball title for a County team since 1999 (Southern Aroostook).

OOB's Jason Webber joined me on this week's podcast to talk about coaching football and softball, his work with WHOU, the Knicks, pier fries, which of the courses at Pirate's Cove is the best one, and a bunch more.

This was a really good one. Jason brought the energy and then some.

Finally, the white smoke.

So quick 12:30am thoughts: this is a lot of stuff, none of it great. But apparently the Bucks' owner was the deciding factor and he's definitely earned the benefit of the doubt from (checks notes) owning the Browns.

I wasn't a fan of any of the Jaylen Brown for Giannis trade theories floating around the internet, especially the Hugo González ones. And maybe the last couple of playoffs flameouts have colored my thinking on Giannis, but I'm not sure adding him was a great idea for the Celtics. I'd rather have Jaylen.

New this year, thanks to the revamped scoreboard, I'll be tracking summer basketball scores and schedules. Well, at least some of them. It's not going to be as exhaustive as the regular season, obviously.

But I'm hoping to get the bigger summer leagues on there, as well as tournaments that bring in teams from around the state

If you go to a team's page (this is the champs from Gardiner), you can get a summary of their select summer ball results.

There's obvious caveats here: summer ball isn't the regular season. Everyone approaches it differently. You don't know who wasn't there because they couldn't get off work or is on a family trip to Springfield or whatever. But, hey, it's not nothing. And it's a fun thing to keep an eye on in advance of next season.

I'm working on adding schedules as I get them and I'd rather not spend the summer hunting down scores. So enter your scores! Or at least send them to me.

Cooper's got a new head coach...at the expense of J.P. Estrella.

Dusty May takes over from Jason Kidd weeks after luring J.P. to Michigan in the transfer portal.

My good friend Malcolm Bedell has a nice piece on his blog about proliferation of AI slop masquerading as marketing.

Sure, they may look more professional than similar graphics that you’ve dreamt up in Canva or using a pen and paper, but they say absolutely nothing about the character of the business or the people running it, other than, “This restaurant is aware that ChatGPT exists.”

A flyer that you design yourself, or that your sister’s kid who’s in his first year at RISD creates, or that you paid someone $10 to create on Fiverr, still says SOMETHING. It says “somebody made this.” Most often, an A.I. flyer screams “nobody made this,” and that’s not an association you want for your business.

Malcolm is talking about restaurants here (that's his trade, after all), but the same can be said for marketing anything else. Athletic events, for example.

If you follow as many teams as I do on social media, you very quickly realize that everyone is using the same couple of tools now to produce all of their promotional graphics and they all look exactly the same and they all look terrible.

Your A.I.-Generated Photography is Making Your Restaurant Look Like Trash – Malcolm Needs a Snack

Malcolm Bedell

And if you're in Thomaston, check out Malcolm's restaurant.

Honey’s Fried Chicken Palace

Probably the best damned fried chicken sandwiches in the county. Scratch-made tendies, too. With like a million sauces. Now open in Thomaston, Maine.

Honey's Fried Chicken Palace0

One of the greats is retiring.

And we're on to basketball.