Winslow coach Ken Lindlof focuses on the team during the boys basketball game against MCI in Winslow on in December 2019. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel file

Playing basketball at Orono High School, Ken Lindlof admits, wasn’t really a matter of choice — it was a natural progression.

The 1971 Orono graduate attended the school during the days of Bob Cimbollek, whose Red Riot teams were a force statewide. The Maine Basketball Hall of Fame coach left a big imprint on Lindlof, 71, who years later would go into coaching himself.

“Being at Orono and being part of basketball and athletics there, we considered it a way of life,” Lindlof said. “There were a lot of great athletes who went through there and a lot of great coaches. … I learned a lot from (Bob) and his fundamental approach to the game.”

More than a half-century later after his time at Orono, it’s Lindlof’s turn to be inducted into the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame. The current Winslow boys coach and former Waterville boys and Maine Central Institute prep team coach will get that honor Sunday at the Cross Insurance Center.

Lindlof became head coach at Waterville in 1981, 10 years after he graduated from Orono. Although the Purple Panthers had been known as a basketball power years earlier, the program had gone more than three decades without a state or regional title when he took the reins.

In 1985, Lindlof’s fourth season, that all changed. Led by four Maine Basketball Hall of Fame players in Todd Hanson, Mike Smith, Dick Whitmore and Kevin Whitmore, the Purple Panthers put together a remarkable season, going 21-1 and beating South Portland 60-35 to win the Class A championship and end a 36-year state title drought.

Page 1 of the March 18, 1985 Morning Sentinel celebrates Waterville’s Class A boys’ basketball title.

“It was a situation where I was able to put four guys who were extremely competitive on the floor, and they made it happen,” Lindlof said. “Any coach needs good players, and looking back, I think (entering the Hall of Fame) is a lot about being the product of those players and a lot of great coaches and a lot of great mentors.”

Lindloff coached Waterville until 2002, when he left the program to become an assistant for the MCI prep team. He held that job until the Pittsfield school discontinued the postgraduate team following the 2011-12 season before taking the Winslow job five years later. Lindlof is 83-46 in seven seasons as Winslow head coach.

Lindlof is also part of Maine Public’s broadcasting crew for the state championships. He’s called some legendary games, such as the Caribou-Maranacook double-overtime Class B boys game in 2020 and the Monmouth Academy-Mount View Class C boys contest this year.

The night before that Monmouth-Mount View game, Lindlof got to call his alma mater in the Class B boys game. A year after Orono took down Oceanside to claim its first state title since 1981, the Red Riots did it again, topping the Mariners 56-47 to repeat as state champions.

“That was a great time because they were playing against Oceanside, and they had beaten (Winslow) and were representing our league (the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference),” Lindlof said. “I love announcing those games. … Hopefully, I called it right down the middle.”

Edward Little High School head coach Mike Adams talks with his team during a timeout during a December 2023 game against Mt. Blue in Farmington. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Another coach entering the Hall of Fame is Mike Adams, who coached Edward Little for 23 years before stepping down this April. Adams had previously been a premier basketball player in central Maine, playing for Mt. Blue from 1986-90 and Thomas College from 1990-94.

Adams, who coached Edward Little to state titles in 2018 and 2020, was Mr. Maine Basketball in 1990, just the third year of the award’s existence. He then came to Waterville to play at Thomas, where he fit in nicely on campus and where his 1,521 points rank him ninth on the program’s all-time list.

“For me, (Thomas) was perfect because I was a small-town kid and loved the smallness of it,” Adams said. “You knew everybody, and everybody you. It’s a special school, and it’s been great to see it grow with all of the facilities and what they’re able to offer today.”

Lawrence High School’s Troy Scott and Gus Folsom will be inducted into the Hall as Legends of the Game. Scott, who played at Lawrence from 1984-88, is the Bulldogs’ all-time leading scorer. Folsom, namesake of the school’s Folsom Gymnasium, coached Lawrence to Eastern Maine titles in 1974 and 1976.

Heather (Ernest) Bond of Mt. Blue and Julie Veilleux of Cony lock arms under the net during a January 2000 game. Bond and Veilleux, who later were teammates at the University of Maine, will be inducted into the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame on Sunday. Kennebec Journal file photo

On the women’s side, Mt. Blue has another inductee in Heather (Ernest) Bond, who was Miss Maine Basketball in 2000 later went on to star at the University of Maine from 2000-04. Also at UMaine during that same time span? Julie Sinclair (Veilleux), who will also be inducted Sunday.

Prior to her time at UMaine, Sinclair had been a star at Cony, where she won a Class A state championship as a sophomore in 1998. She then coached at the college level, including a stint as head coach of the Colby College women’s team from 2011-16.