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BINGHAM — Kristin Hermanson has spent many nights on the gymnasium floor at Upper Kennebec Valley High School. This time, however, was different.

A 2006 Valley graduate, Hermanson played basketball for longtime coach Gordon Hartwell. Now the head coach at Bangor, she returned to Valley on Wednesday to see a new scoreboard, the program’s first Gold Ball in the trophy case — and, of course, to face her old mentor.

“I have so many amazing memories here,” Hermanson said. “To be here and coach against my old coach (Gordon Hartwell), who I absolutely love and respect, and be able to have a game like this, it was a lot of fun. It’s great to see Valley doing great things.”

It was the perfect occasion to bring together Class A Bangor (enrollment 1,069) and Class S Valley (enrollment 63), teams with little in common besides Hermanson. A 58-49 Bangor victory left both teams with something positive in a game that was not only a homecoming but the kind of contest that’s becoming familiar to the Cavaliers.

Twenty years ago, Hermanson was playing in this very gym. She was a 1,701-point scorer, and Valley enjoyed great success with her as a starting guard, finishing as the Western Class D runner-up her freshman and junior years and winning the regional championship as a senior.

Hermanson’s Bangor team got acquainted with Valley earlier this year, as the Rams beat the Cavaliers on a last-second shot in summer league play. The two immediately scheduled another game in the preseason, and after Tuesday’s weather postponed the contest, Bangor finally made the trip Wednesday.

“Having had Kristin as a player, she’s such a competitor, and I knew they would show up better than (they were in the summer) because she’s had more time to work with them,” Hartwell said. “I knew it would be a great experience, and I was really happy they were nice enough to come here and play us.”

Make no mistake: These two teams belonged on the same floor. Fueled by 3-pointers from Liana Hartwell and Delia Hill, Valley led Bangor early in the game. Although the Rams ultimately took the lead and kept it throughout the second half, the Cavaliers didn’t go away, pushing a school 17 times their size to the limit.

“Our girls show grit and toughness, and they do not back down against anybody,” Hartwell said. “They feel like they can play with everybody, and they have the confidence to know that they can play with everybody. They’re not intimidated, and that’s big going into a matchup like this.”

Preseason games between one of the largest schools and one of the smallest schools in the state aren’t new. The Valley boys, after all, ran their Bangor counterparts off the floor during their unprecedented winning streak at the turn of the century. The Penobscot Valley girls beat Edward Little in a preseason game just last week.

Given the way Valley tends to bulldoze its regular-season opposition — the Cavaliers won 14 of their 18 regular-season games by 35-plus points last year — it’s important for Valley to get a true test. That’s exactly what the Cavaliers did by scheduling Bangor as well as Hampden Academy (enrollment 749) and Lawrence (528) this preseason.

For Bangor, though, such a matchup could be perceived as risky — a Class A school, Hartwell noted, doesn’t necessarily get as much out of scheduling this kind of game as a Class S team does. Yet Hermanson and Dalaney Horr, a Bangor senior guard committed to Husson, didn’t see it that way.

“It was great for us to come up here and experience how hard a smaller school fights to win,” Horr said. “It was fun to come here to their gym. … They played us hard and with a lot of intensity, and it was a great game that was really competitive. We can both learn from it.”

It’s a different feeling, Horr added, than what Bangor will experience the rest of the winter. The Rams open their season Saturday against Brunswick, enrollment 717. Mount Desert Island (476) is the only school on their schedule with an enrollment smaller than 500.

On Wednesday, Valley fought Bangor just as hard — and possibly even harder — than many of the foes the Rams will face this season. It’s a precursor, then, for what’s to come — even if the building Hermanson’s team played in this time is a little smaller than anywhere else it’ll be this winter.

“I told them to be prepared to sit in a bleacher instead of a chair, having the fans right on top of you and having the walls right there,” Hermanson said. “It’s good for them to see that and experience something different, and I’m happy they got a chance to do that.”