Along with its two wins this season, the Bates College football team has two losses by a touchdown. Third-year coach Matt Coyne said the Bobcats are on the verge of winning more consistently.

“We’ve played, you know, much better complementary football across the board, offensively and defensively,” Coyne said. “Again, in the third year with our classes in here, you can start to see the experience helping us. I think the biggest thing is in critical moments in some of those games against the top-half teams, we made the plays against Amherst and Tufts; then in some other games, we didn’t.”

Coyne said that increased depth on both sides of the ball has helped Bates (2-5) remain in games well into the fourth quarter. He added that many of the players who have stepped up have eligibility beyond this season.

That includes junior linebacker Ryan Rozich, who leads the New England Small College Athletic Conference with 89 tackles, and sophomore Carmel Crunk, who is second on the team with 63 tackles. On offense, Coyne highlighted sophomore wide receivers Quinn Carver (312 yards) and Jeff Vidou (253 yards) for their progress.  

“You can see we have physically gotten to a point now where we feel that we can really hang with anybody in the trenches and in the tackling, and on defense, and our run game on offense,” Coyne said. “ I think that’s just a lot of our weight room emphasis in the offseason, and just guys maturing and getting older. I think we have some really talented skill players that are still sophomores, a lot of them, but they’re developing nicely.”

The Bobcats end the season against NESCAC’s two one-win teams, first at rival Bowdoin on Saturday, and then at home against Hamilton on Nov. 8.

Terriers enter postseason with momentum

Thomas College men’s soccer coach Kyle Fletcher understands games become more challenging in the conference tournament, no matter how good a team’s regular-season record is.

“I think you saw it a bit last year, where we had some regular-season results in conference play that were a little lopsided,” Fletcher said. “But when we get in the conference playoffs, none of those games are easy. Last year, Husson took us to penalties. (Maine Maritime Academy) took us right down to pretty much the last kick of the game. Then traveling out to (SUNY) Delhi was very tough.”

Defending North Atlantic Conference champion Thomas (11-7-1), this year’s No. 1 seed, opens the postseason at home against fourth-seeded Maine Maritime at 6 p.m. Saturday.

The Terriers dominated conference play, going 7-0-1 and finishing unbeaten for the second straight season (they were 8-0-2 against NAC opponents last year).

If Thomas makes it through the NAC playoffs again, another NCAA Division III tournament berth awaits. The Terriers lost 3-0 to Buffalo State in the first round last year, so Fletcher bolstered the 2025 non-conference schedule to better prepare Thomas for the postseason.

“We got Middlebury on (the schedule), and they were in the Final Four last year, one of the top-ranked teams in the country,” Fletcher said. “(We added a) couple of other more challenging games.”

Thomas went 3-7 in its nonconference schedule.

Drop the puck

The NCAA Division III hockey regular season starts this weekend for the University of New England and the University of Southern Maine.

The Nor’Easters men’s team is ranked No. 9 in the preseason Division III USCHO poll. They have made the NCAA tournament three of the past four seasons, including last year when they finished with an 18-8-1 record. UNE has one one Mainer, Lewiston’s Damon Bossie, on its year’s roster.

The UNE women’s team went 13-13-1 and reached the Conference of New England semifinals in 2024-25. Laine Lemieux (Topsham) and 2024 Becky Schaffer Award winner Emerson Homa (Gorham) are in-state players on the roster.

The 2025-26 season marks the beginning of a new chapter of USM hockey. The men’s and women’s squads join the rest of the school’s athletic teams in the Little East Conference, which will sponsor hockey for the first time. The Huskies previously competed in the New England Hockey Conference. Little East opponents include Babson (men only), Keene State, New England College, Norwich, Plymouth State, UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth (men only), Vermont State Castleton and Western Connecticut (men only).

The USM men’s team, coming off a 7-17-1 season, features five Mainers: Issac Grondin (Yarmouth), Nick Vinson (Brewer), Gage LeTourneau (Presque Isle), Gavin Simopoulos (Cape Elizabeth) and 2021 Travis Roy Award winner Owen Drummey (Falmouth).

The women’s team went 11-13-2 and reached the New England Hockey Conference quarterfinals last season. Its Maine players are Greta Grant (Brownfield), Morgan Rochefort (Bangor) and Anna Elizarkov (Boothbay Harbor).

Bowdoin and Colby will start their hockey seasons Nov. 14.