A January snowstorm delayed delivery of new bleachers to Jay, but coaches reshuffled the schedule so senior nights for both teams could be held on their home court.
JAY — High school sports teams almost always prefer to play at home, where they practice every day after school. But for the Phoenix girls' and boys' basketball teams at Spruce Mountain High School, “home” for several games this season was actually “away.” Some practices, too.
They often did not know far in advance where their home away from home would be — or even which day they would be playing.
That is because the school is installing new bleachers in the gymnasium, and it was not possible for the Phoenix to play every home game at the Phoenix Dome in Jay.
For Grace Cuthbertson, Austin Armandi and Cai Dougher, Spruce Mountain’s three senior basketball players, not knowing whether they would be able to observe the customary senior night in their home gym was a bit of a drag.
Athletic Director Marc Keller worked out a plan with the company installing the bleachers to have enough new stands in place for Spruce Mountain to hold its senior nights this week — Tuesday for the girls and Wednesday for the boys.
Those are the last home games of the year for the Phoenix — and the last high school home games for Cuthbertson, Armandi and Dougher.
Knowing she was barely 24 hours from her final game in the Dome, Cuthbertson said Monday, was “bittersweet.”
“I’ll be sad to be leaving (in June),” she said, “but I’ll still be part of the community here.”
Being able to play the final game at home, Dougher said, “makes senior night more special.”
“Those are cherished moments,” she said, “and they’re over before you know it.”
As Keller explained, senior night at Spruce Mountain is more than just handing certificates and floral arrangements to the seniors and their parents.
For example, when visitors walk into the gym and turn around, they see each player’s number and name on a nameplate, aligned in numerical order on the wall. Cuthbertson, the only senior on the girls’ team, tops the list because she wears No. 0.
But starting Tuesday night, three of the nameplates will be gone.
“We put the players in a lift and raise them up there to take down their own name,” Keller said — Tuesday for Cuthbertson, Wednesday for Armandi and Dougher.
The players go up one at a time. And are they nervous about being lifted 15 or so feet above the floor?
“Not really,” Armandi said.
But none said it was an exciting prospect.
In addition to taking down their nameplates, the players are honored with speeches. For the girls’ team, the speeches come from their teammates. For the boys, coach Scott Bessey delivers words of thanks.
Cuthbertson said she expects her teammates’ speeches to be short “because I’m the only senior.”
And the teams usually present the seniors’ parents with flowers, the players said.
Cuthbertson said she is “grateful” to be able to take down her nameplate on senior night in her home gym. Armandi and Dougher used the same word. Cuthbertson added that it has been “disappointing not to practice (and play games) on our home court.”
No one in Maine should be surprised that the weather created uncertainty about whether, when and where the Phoenix would play late-season games. Trucks carrying new bleachers from Manitoba, the Canadian province more than 1,500 miles away, were scheduled to arrive Jan. 20, but a snowstorm in the Dakotas delayed them.
That set Keller, girls’ basketball coach Zach Keene and Bessey into motion, rescheduling dates and locations so the teams could play the usual 18 games before the regular season ends and still finish at home for their senior nights.
When the dust settled, the girls' team had played one home-away game and another as part of a tripleheader with two boys' games that had been moved. The boys played two home-away games and a home game that was rescheduled twice.
Being on the road does not seem to have hurt the Phoenix girls.
On Saturday, the girls defeated Mount View High School of Thorndike 65-52 in a game at Mt. Blue High School in Farmington. A stranger wandering into the gym might have thought he or she was in Jay, given all the fans in Phoenix green and black among the more than 150 people in attendance.
The game had been scheduled for the Phoenix gym Friday, but Cyndi Pratt, the athletic director at Mt. Blue, worked with Keller to move it to Mt. Blue.
Even with the home-away game at Mt. Blue and practices on the smaller middle school court, the Phoenix girls are 16-1 and sit at No. 1 in the Southern Maine Class C rankings.
The change does not appear to have hurt the boys’ team. On Monday night, the Phoenix beat Oak Hill High School 68-43 in Wales. The boys enter Wednesday’s final game at 15-2, tied for No. 1 in the Southern Maine Class C rankings.
The Phoenix boys have played home‑away twice. On Jan. 27, they traveled to Mountain Valley High School in Rumford for a game that was originally scheduled for Jay. The Phoenix won 63-41, while the junior varsity boys fell 52-47. After those two games, the girls played the third game of the day.
A day later, the Phoenix boys played the Lisbon High School boys, but not at Jay or Lisbon. Leavitt Area High School in Turner was the host that night, and the Phoenix varsity won 60-19 and the junior varsity won 51-26. Those games were to have been played at Spruce Mountain.
Complicating things further for Keller and the coaches, when the Lisbon game was moved to Jan. 28 at Leavitt, the final date of the year opened up for the Phoenix boys to hold senior night at home. Mount Abram Regional High School in Salem Township agreed to shift its Jan. 20 game to Wednesday for the event. Keller tried to set that game for Jan. 21, but no referees were available.
On Wednesday night, a day after Cuthbertson removed her nameplate, Armandi and Dougher will take theirs down and share in the bittersweet moment.
The three student‑athletes said they plan to continue their education: Cuthbertson is looking at the University of Maine at Farmington, where she hopes to play field hockey; Armandi wants to play football and is weighing Endicott College in Massachusetts and Plymouth State University in New Hampshire; and Dougher is considering Saint Joseph’s College of Maine in Standish.
Category: General Sports
