Spring Sports! (Weather Permitting)

Ok, after a winter that simply would not quit (the last snow left my yard yesterday, knock on wood), it's time for spring sports.

When it comes to the Model, spring sports have often been the ugly stepchild. I've tracked heal points and some rankings in the past couple seasons, but rather passively, and mostly just heal points. But, with the new website, spring sports is the first opportunity to test things out and see if they really work.

I've been using the break since we cut down the nets to revamp the website using Claude AI. It's been...interesting. At first, it seemed like it would be a quick process. I got 90% of it done in, like, a week. But that last 10% has been an adventure. The AI robot is really, really good at a lot of things and really, really dumb at a lot of other things. I can't even tell you how many times I've had to explain to it how to calculate heal points.

Let's go through some highlights. First: you can make it into a web app on your phone.

If you go to app.mainebasketballrankings.com, click share, view more, and add to home screen and viola! It'll act like an app, mostly. The plan is to make this a proper iPhone app over the summer.

I know I've mentioned most of this before, but if there's one thing I've learned it's that you have to repeat yourself to get things to sink in.

Live Scoring

So my big test of the break has been if I could make my own version of the live stats we use for the tournament that's customizable with a number of features I've long wanted (roster import via csv, for example) and that went so well that I went ahead and made a version for baseball and softball that almost ready. I've got a couple more things to test (just fixed a bug where it was awarding a RBI if you hit into a double-play and scored a run). But it will really, really benefit from a roster, which you can submit.

I'm working on adding a feature where you can add game stats.

Heal Points

This is the big one. I've revamped the Heal Points page. Gone is the tableau public data visualization and in it's place, this (let's use basketball as an example):

You can see a team's schedule at a glance. The green/red bar tells you at a glance how the game went and underneath the bar, you can see the Preliminary Index for each opponent (i.e. what they're worth).

If you go to the new scoreboard, you can report a score in a number of ways. You can report a final score, or a score of a game in-progress, or (very soon) live score a baseball or softball game.

Here you can see a streaming link (very likely the basketball link right now), the Stax Index, and the time and location of the game. You can report a PPD in case, say, the field is a mess. And if you hit submit, it'll drop down a menu.

There's a couple of benefits here. If people are updating games, then we all know what the scores are around the state, obviously, and this will come in very handy late in the season. Imagine scoreboard watching and you know that Cony is up 1 in the 4th quarter of the game you need them to win. It's not ground-breaking stuff, but it is for Maine high school sports where very often you're waiting for an AD to report a score the next morning (or later).

When you update a score as final, it'll update the heal points immediately. No waiting for the AD. No waiting for a coach. You don't even have to wait for me to get back to my computer! You can see the change to the heal points before you even leave the bleachers.

Let's round up some news.

Falmouth's Spencer Emerson is on the move.

As is JP Estrella, who was one of the most sought after bigs in the transfer portal and will be joining the champs.

Meanwhile, in another timeline, Cooper might be in the portal, but he's just wrapped up his rookie year in the NBA and is locked in one of the righter ROY votes in a while.

Back to spring sports.

Varsity Maine has their usual roundup of players and teams to watch.

Meet the 10 central Maine baseball players to watch in 2026

Two standout seniors and a host of strong juniors highlight this list of potential top players in the region.

Centralmaine.comMike MandellStaff Writer

Game of the Day

This is where I normally do the Game of the Day and there's no point, but if you're curious, the York/Freeport boys LAX game has the highest Stax Index with 83.1, for what it's worth.

Spreads

Also, the spreads page is much improved. During basketball season it was anyone's guess if I remembered to update it at 2am before I crashed, but with the new website, this updates automatically. So it should always work!

And it'll keep track of how the Model did, like so:

Check it out. Keep in mind that the picks are currently 100% based on last year's regular season stats.

Daily Picks — Maine Basketball Rankings

Daily game picks and spreads for Maine high school sports.

Maine Basketball Rankings

The Model's picks for today's games are after the jump.