FAIRFIELD — Welcome to February.

No. 1 vs. No. 2; an environment so loud you can’t hear the person next to you; a game that has you on the edge of your seat. This was one of those spectacles that lets you know a time of year like no other is here.

Tuesday’s matchup between the Gardiner and Lawrence girls basketball teams in Folsom Gymnasium lived up to every inch of the hype imaginable, and trust me, there was a lot of it. The Tigers’ 53-44 win, simply put, had everything you could have wanted from a basketball game.

Just pulling into Lawrence High School on Tuesday, you could tell that something was different about this night. Folsom Gym being packed isn’t unusual, but you can usually find a place to park and a seat somewhere on the visiting side while avoiding lines for bathrooms or concessions — even ahead of big games such as this Senior Night clash of titans.

Not on this night. Just under an hour before tip-off, you weren’t getting a parking spot anywhere near the school. The closest you could get was nearby Mamie Street, and even that was filling up with the scheduled tip-off 45 minutes away. The line for concessions wrapped around the hallway such that you couldn’t tell where that line ended and the line to enter the gym began. Fans hoping to find seats took quick looks at the home and away bleachers, realized almost instantly that it was a no-go and instead settled for standing room in the corner.

Folsom Gym, if you haven’t had the privilege of seeing a game there, is a truly remarkable sporting environment. It’s cramped, which can be a pain when you’re a reporter in need of some space, but you forget all about that when you become immersed in the atmosphere. It’s a gym that puts you right on the court; those in the front row on the home side are just inches from being in bounds, and the bleachers on the visiting side can’t even be fully extended as they would push into the bench area and scorers’ table. 

There’s nothing like Folsom, then, when it gets going — and Tuesday, it was going. Both sides of the gym erupted following big plays from their respective teams as the crowd fed off the energy of passionate players on the floor and on the bench. It was so hard to hear that, at one point, I couldn’t communicate with our photographer, Rich Abrahamson. He was standing a mere 2 feet away, but it might as well have been 2 miles with the way the sound permeated every square millimeter of the gym.

“This was old-school Folsom Gymnasium, like the Cindy Blodgett era and those big games in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, a long time before COVID,” Lawrence head coach Greg Chesley said of the atmosphere. “To get everyone packed in here like this was just so awesome. It was totally full, even before the end of the JV game. I haven’t seen it like that in years.”

The game was one that had generated plenty of chatter on social media, and with an undefeated, No. 1-ranked team in Gardiner (16-0) taking on a No. 2 Lawrence team (14-2) on a 12-game winning streak, that chatter was justified. Even some people who weren’t working the game and had no affiliation to either school made their way to Fairfield just to see it.

They got a game that had everything. Big runs from both teams; huge 3-pointers that sent either half of the gym into a frenzy; breathtaking blocks from a Division I-bound star; unsung heroes stepping up with big plays. It went all the way down to the wire before Gardiner, which got clutch games from junior forward Taylor Takatsu and senior guard McKenna Johnson (not to discount the 15 points, 19 rebounds and six blocks by Lizzy Gruber), finally pulled away.

With the regular season coming to a close, it’s the kind of game that was the perfect sendoff as we head into an event that defines winter life in our state. From here on out, the stakes, the matchups and the energy are just going to keep getting bigger and better as the tournament arrives and progresses.

The magic of February, though, didn’t wait until tourney time to start; it started Tuesday night with this game in Fairfield. This was a tournament environment, one that brought everything we love about Maine high school basketball into 32 minutes of action. If anyone left Lawrence High School not feeling energized, those people should be checked for a pulse.

“We knew it was going to be like this,” said Gardiner head coach Mike Gray. “These two teams are so close, and with this many people packed into the gym and the emotion of Senior Night, you’re going to get something special. It was awesome.”

It certainly was — and it’s only going to get better from here. It’s that time of year.

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