WATERVILLE — “Push!” Rob Rodrigue yelled. “Push! Push!”

It was the first day of practice for most high school winter sports in Maine. Rodrigue, the new girls basketball coach at Waterville Senior High School, was conducting his first drill, so there was no better time to start instilling the kind of style he wanted.

Additional Photos

BACK TO WORK: Messalonskee High School indoor track coach Scott Wilson watches as sprinters William Couture, left, and Kyle Howard run up a flight of stairs during the first day of practice on Monday at Messalonskee High School. Staff photo by David Leaming

Rodrigue, a former assistant with the Messalonskee girls, takes over for Ted Rioux, who is now the women’s basketball coach at Thomas College.

“It’s a new conference for me,” Rodrigue said. “A little anxious, a little nervous. I’m excited. I just wanted to be a head coach. It’s an opportunity that popped up. I think the biggest thing is to get these kids excited about basketball.”

The Purple Panthers had only eight players at Monday’s practice, which was at the junior high because the high school gym was unavailable. Before working with the varsity team, Rodrigue was helping out at the middle school practice.

“You’ve got to have big talent pools, and in order to get that going, you’ve got to be a leader in that situation,” Rodrigue said. “I think this is where it has to start.”

For Mt. Blue boys basketball, the situation is different in every way. Coach Jim Bessey is in his 37th season with the Cougars, and he has a team that should be among the best in Eastern A. Bessey said that definitely impacts how he’ll approach preseason practices this year.

“We had two seniors on last year’s team,” Bessey said. “That means you’ve got 10 or 11 players coming back with varsity experience — which means you should be able to move things at a more rapid pace, and be better prepared for your first game than you would if it’s a younger group of kids.”

Bob Morison coaches indoor track at Winslow with Shawn Carey. Morison knows most of his athletes played fall sports, so he used Monday to see whether the fitness level carried over to this week.

“We worked on a lot of core stuff,” Morison said. “It was not a hard workout, just a nice, easy workout to see where the level of fitness is and see what we’ve got.”

While many coaches are dealing with declining participation at all levels, Morison said numbers are way up from last winter. He also liked what he got for an answer to Monday’s fitness question.

“Very encouraged by what we saw,” he said. “The kids that are new are all athletes.”

Lawrence cheerleading coach Alicia Curtis is on a pretty tight schedule, even though the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference championships aren’t until mid-January.

“The first practice is just getting everybody together, going over basic skills,” Curtis said. “Our choreography is this weekend. We learn our entire routine in two days.”

Like all coaches, Curtis has to understand that high-schoolers trying out for a team might be a little nervous. But that’s more of a factor in cheerleading, where a routine is a little under three minutes and in front of a huge crowd.

“If they can’t perform well in front of me,” Curtis said, “how are they going to do in front of a couple thousand people?”

Curtis added that tryouts have to be different, because cheerleaders will be performing individually instead of as part of a group. Overall, she was happy with what she saw on Monday.

“It was really good — very promising,” she said. “Most of the kids had cheered throughout the fall, so they’re coming in with a lot of experience.”

Girls hockey teams in Maine were able to start practicing Nov. 7, and in fact, the season begins Friday. Skiing teams can being practice Nov. 28.

Matt DiFilippo — 861-9243

mdifilippo@centralmaine.com

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