He Won Five State Titles at Southern Aroostook. Then He Moved Even Further North.

Cliff Urquhart built a dynasty in Dyer Brook with a Southern Aroostook girls team he led to 5 state titles and one of the more dominant runs any program in the state has seen over the last decade. But earlier this spring, he stepped off the sidelines to take an administrative job even further north at Fort Fairfield. He joined the podcast to talk about that, his time at Southern Aroostook, an unforgettable closed scrimmage with Caribou, and so much more.

You'll want to hear this episode if...

• You've ever wondered how Southern Aroostook kept winning. Cliff is refreshingly honest about it: it wasn't just him. It was the Shields family, the Russells, the Burpees — basketball families whose kids showed up already knowing how to play. He just had to not mess it up.
• You want to know what it's actually like to be your own AD. Spoiler: you can't complain about the AD. There is no AD. Every bad scheduling decision is yours.
• You've ever coached a team that lost by 100 one year and went 13-5 the next. Cliff had the youngest team in Maine basketball history — four eighth graders, three freshmen — finish as the one seed. That group became the 2018 and 2019 state champions.
• You were at that Caribou scrimmage. The closed pre-tournament game that went to overtime, finished 94-91, and featured a performance from Caribou's star that Cliff estimates at around 49 points. The funnest game no one got to see.
• You've ever sat on a committee and immediately regretted it. Cliff's been on the MPA classification committee. He has thoughts.

Show Notes

Why Fort Fairfield? After nearly 20 years in the classroom, Cliff was ready for a change. The Fort Fairfield job is a combined assistant principal and athletic director role — still in sports, out of the classroom, and yes, even further north than Southern Aroostook. He's the first to admit he never saw that coming.

Being your own AD. The upside is real — you schedule who you want, when you want, where you want. The downside is there's no one to blame when something goes sideways. No excuses. Cliff is blunt about it: it's advantageous, and he can't pretend otherwise.

What Fort Fairfield's coaches don't need to worry about. Cody Clawson and Mark Weekes run the programs. Cliff is there to support them, not second-guess them. He made the Brad Stevens comparison himself.

How Cliff got into coaching. It started with Dr. John Wink's baseball program at Husson — a coach whose practice schedules were detailed to the second, with no standing around, no lines, every minute accounted for. Cliff helped run Husson's summer camp for three years, fell in love with it, and the rest followed naturally when he started teaching phys ed.

The time he almost quit after two years. He hadn't developed what he calls "alligator skin" yet. Parent complaints, playing time politics — it wasn't worth it. He turned in his resignation. Then Phil Faulkner called from Katahdin needing an emergency boys coach, and Cliff went to run the scoreclock that night in a preseason scrimmage and saw a 5'11 point guard named Billy Lisby running the floor like a coach in a player's uniform. He called Faulkner after the game and took the job. Billy Lisby is now the head coach at Spurgeon College in Kansas City — he took over a 2-23 program and turned it into a 23-2 program.

Leaving Billy behind at the bus. On a trip to Mars Hill, Lisby missed the bus. His parents drove him an hour. Cliff didn't play him. Not a minute. His parents came down after the game and said it was a life lesson. Cliff has softened since then. A little.

The 2021 co-championship. COVID scrambled everything, but Southern Aroostook and Presque Isle met for the Aroostook County Championship. The problem: Southern Aroostook had lost to Presque Isle by nearly 30 in the regular season. Before the rematch, assistant coach Brandon McCarthy's bag of gum got hidden in the ceiling tiles of Presque Isle's locker room. The message was clear: the only way to get it back was to come back and win. They did. Cliff ran dribble drive for the first time ever, got penetration and kick-outs, and pulled off what he describes as a Hoosiers moment. He still thinks they would have competed for a state title that year.

The youngest team in Maine basketball history. After a 3-15 season with six players — including a game in Van Buren where four kids showed up and Cliff had to negotiate a fifth into coming by promising to pay her what she'd make shoveling roofs — the roster turned over. Four eighth graders. Three freshmen. 13-5 record. One seed. A quarterfinal overtime win that had 13 and 14-year-olds sprinting off the floor like they'd won a state title. Larry Mahoney of the Bangor Daily News called them the youngest team in the history of Maine basketball. That group won state championships in 2018 and 2019.

Coaching girls vs. coaching boys. The X's and O's shift some — girls have a harder time creating their own shot, so sets and actions matter more — but the biggest adjustment for Cliff was the bus ride. He was the guy who put headphones in his bag with no music just so no one would talk to him on the way to games. His girls were laughing and having fun. It took him a few years to realize that wasn't a problem.

The injury years. In 2025, Ally Shields — whose family has more names on the Southern Aroostook thousand-point banner than anyone — tore her ACL in soccer and then finished the tear in the first practice of basketball season. Hannah McGary missed 10-12 games with a foot injury that never got a clear diagnosis. Southern Aroostook started basically five new players, won a prelim game against a team that had beaten them twice, and had a halftime lead on one-seed Bangor Christian in the quarters. This past season, Shields came back, McGary tore her ACL and missed her senior year, and they drew a motivated Penobscot Valley team as a five seed. Penobscot Valley went on to have a great tournament run. Cliff's description of that matchup: "We ran into a buzzsaw."

The Caribou scrimmage. Pre-tournament, closed scrimmage. Southern Aroostook in class D, Caribou in class B, the year before Caribou won it all. They're running scout team offense for each other, nobody's in their base defense, and somehow the game goes to overtime and finishes 94-91 Caribou. Cliff estimates the Caribou star finished around 49 points. Parents from both sides came down afterward saying it was the most fun they'd had watching a basketball game. Cliff says it's the best game no one got to see.

The classification committee. Cliff has served on the MPA classification committee and will readily tell you it is harder than it looks from the outside. Every team you move affects six other teams. You have to separate what's good for Southern Aroostook from what's good for Maine basketball. He thinks Class S is here to stay — schools aren't getting bigger, small schools are getting smaller, and eventually there will be more teams in it, not fewer. He terms out next year.

What he'd change about MPA basketball. His answer: timeout advancement to halfcourt in the girls game, like the college rule. So teams don't have to throw 80-foot passes with two seconds left. They can run a set and get a real shot off. He thinks a shot clock is coming eventually too — just not next year. Lucas's counter-proposal — burning a timeout to send the other team to the bonus and skip the intentional foul parade — did not get an immediate endorsement, but Cliff acknowledged the safety argument.

Recorded May 31, 2026.