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The Concord Orthopaedics Thursday Thoughts for 10/26/2017

By Dave Haley, 10/26/17, 6:30AM EDT

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Laconia is heading back to Division II after this season (photo by Kelley Gaspa)

  Between coaching news, teams moving from one division to another next season due to realignment and the passing of a beloved coach it seemed like the right time for a basketball version of the Thursday Thoughts. Call it a practice run for a season that will begin with the Division IV preview on December 5th.

 I’ll be raising money for basketball programs in the pre-season running 10-day fundraisers with Adrenaline Fundraising. If you’re a program that could use funding for the season reach out to me anytime to set up a 10-day program that will be done before the regular season begins.

 

 2018-19 Re-alignment…………Division I just got a little more crowded and the impact of Kearsarge’s 2017 title run

 There will be no changes this upcoming season to any of the four divisions as we enter the second year of the two year cycle but you’ll see big changes beginning next season.

 It’s been widely reported that Windham (enrollment of 925) will be moving up to Division I after the threshold for Division I was bumped down to 900 students but they won’t be the only team leaving Division II after the season. Goffstown will be going back up as will Timberlane. The Owls petitioned down after a long losing streak in Division I four years ago but I was told the committee took a hard line on petitioning down, and the run by Kearsarge the past two years had a lot to do with it.

 Although I’m told the Cougars didn’t specifically come up in the room very often, and their move back to Division II was decided back in the spring, the view of some athletic directors & coaches was Kearsarge petitioning down to stay in Division III and then advancing to back to back finals appearances was the nail in the coffin for programs looking to move down.

 To be fair Kearsarge struggled in its first two seasons in Division III, never advancing past the first round of the tournament. But with all-state performers like Trent Noordsij, Zach & Tayler Mattos & Tommy Johnson coming through Nate Camp’s program the Cougars became a dominant team as one of the division’s largest schools. That meant schools like Laconia and Sanborn were not going to be granted staying in Division III with enrollments over 524 students. Stevens will also move up to Division II in 2018-19.

 2018 Boys Basketball Divisions

 Division I (from largest to smallest): Pinkerton, Nashua South, Nashua North, Exeter, Concord, Manchester Central, Bedford, Londonderry, Manchester Memorial, Keene, Spaulding, Dover, Merrimack, Alvirne, Timberlane, Salem, Goffstown, Portsmouth, Winnacunnet, Windham, Bishop Guertin & Trinity.

 Division II (from largest to smallest): Milford, Merrimack Valley, Manchester West, Hollis-Brookline, Pembroke, Oyster River, Souhegan, Kingswood, Kennett, Con-Val, Hanover, Coe-Brown, Plymouth, John Stark, Bow, Pelham, Sanborn, Lebanon, Stevens, Laconia, Kearsarge & Bishop Brady

Division III (from largest to smallest): Fall Mountain, Monadnock, Gilford, Prospect Mountain, Campbell, Winnisquam, Somersworth, St Thomas, Conant, Berlin, Belmont, Raymond, Newfound, White Mountains, Newport, Hillsboro-Deering, Mascoma, Inter-Lakes, Mascenic, Franklin & Hopkinton

Division IV (from largest to smallest): Epping, Newmarket, Littleton, Farmington, Derryfield, Woodsville, Portsmouth Christian, Moultonborough, Nute, Pittsfield, Wilton-Lyndeborough, Hinsdale, Profile, Sunapee, Groveton, Colebrook, Canaan-Pittsburg, Lisbon, Lin-Wood, Concord Christian & Mount Royal

 The last three champions from Division III have been Pelham (back to back) and Kearsarge, two schools currently in Division II. If you want to really hammer the point home the last three schools to compete in the Division III championship game; Pelham, Kearsarge & Stevens, will all be in Division II next season.

 Pelham didn’t petition down in 2015, they were forced to go down after a cycle of low numbers. Former head coach Matt Regan (now at Bishop Guertin) wanted to petition back up to Division II, as his team was coming off of a Division II Final Four appearance in 2014, but with the girls’ team being tied to them it wasn’t feasible.

 Why there was so much outrage over Pelham during their two years and not a peep made about Kearsarge is something that confuses me to this day. You should have read the emails I was getting back in 2015 about Pelham…you’d think they were running a Ponzi scheme on all of Division III.

 The only explanation I can come up with is the fact that, as mentioned above, Kearsarge did not dominate when they came down to Division III. In fact, they did not finish over .500 their first two seasons while Pelham was a semifinal team with Keith Brown & Ryan Cloutier returning. Still, Kearsarge made the choice to petition down while Pelham was assigned Division III based on an enrollment decrease. Some people never seemed to take that into account.

 Kearsarge is back in Division II and although they will be the pre-season #1 behind the all-state duo of  Tayler Mattos & Johnson they’ll struggle after they graduate in June. Still, the numbers dictate they are a Division II program and even if they do struggle, a petition down in the future is very unlikely after going to back to back finals in 2016 & 2017.

 Laconia is the school hardest hit by the move down. Their enrollment is listed at 547 but their numbers decrease through the course of the school year. In Division III, where Steve McDonough’s team was a Top 11 seed in 2015 & 2016, the Sachems are able to play in the Lakes Region ‘league’ with Gilford, Belmont, Winnisquam, Franklin, Inter-Lakes, Prospect Mountain, and Newfound. A crossover game annually with Plymouth means Laconia plays 9 of their 18 games with schools within 15 miles of them in Division III. That changes drastically beginning next season when Laconia will likely travel to schools like Oyster River, Coe-Brown, Pembroke and Bishop Brady.

 Division I will expand from 19 teams to 21. That means that the unique nature of the Division I schedule goes away with the expansion. With 19 teams this upcoming season every team will face each other one time, giving Division I a true tie-breaker that the other three divisions do not have. The expansion means big-time teams may not even face each other during the season; in fact, you can count on it.

 Timberlane head coach Jeff Baumann has worked very hard to build that program up after the 81 game losing streak (NHsportspage/Deadspin clip: Timberlane breaks an 81 game losing streak) and so this has to be a tough blow. Timberlane is known for their wrestling program more than their basketball and the move back up to Division I at the very least stalls the momentum Baumann has created.

 The only division unaffected is Division IV but keep an eye on Epping when the next cycle finishes in 2020. The town of Epping has really taken off in the last five years with new restaurants, movie theatres, and housing developments. We may see them go back to Division III when the numbers are looked at again in a few years. At 280 students Epping has more students than Colebrook & Groveton combined (if you’d like me to come up with a Groveton/Colebrook all-star team from the last 10 years I’d be happy to put together a three-hour podcast with McIsaac…just give me the word & we’ll start recording). With a good coach in Nick Fiset the Blue Devils will compete for a spot in Plymouth annually and as I wrote about in our final Thursday column of the 2017 season (Click to read that column) this is a division that will be dominated by the schools at the top of the enrollment list.

 

 Coaching news and our Coaches for a Cause Jamboree schedule…

 As we announced on Twitter at the end of September Rich Otis was named head coach at Pembroke Academy, taking over for Shannon Sciria who left after two seasons as head coach. It’s a good hire for a Spartans team that has some very good returning starters led by Sean Menard, Noah Cummings, and Jake Sherman. Otis spent last season on the Manchester Central coaching staff under Dave Keefe after two seasons at Franklin where he came thisclose to a Final Four appearance in 2016. Otis knows the area; he’s a Concord guy and was a longtime coach at Merrimack Valley. He realizes he has a team capable of a run to Durham and he’s worked with all-state guards in his time at Trinity as an assistant. Otis will be able to set a very exciting backcourt on the right course. It’s a good hire for Pembroke who right now needs stability……….Marty Edwards is the new head coach at Alvirne after Brian Lynch stepped down. Edwards was a longtime Jim Migneault assistant at Bishop Guertin and inherits a first team all-state shooting guard (Max Bonney-Liles) and a Top 10 team in Division I………..Dave Wheeler was named the new head coach at Wilton-Lyndeborough……NO, NOT THAT DAVE WHEELER…Doc is still not officially coaching but would come back as a head coach if the right job opens up after the season.

 A huge thank you from Pete, Jen, Jon, Justin, Eliot & myself to the basketball coaches who didn’t even wait for the season to begin to register as Gold Level members. Each coach will have access to every single full game video we produce this season, beginning with our Coaches for a Cause Jamboree on Saturday, December 9th at NHTI.

 Gold Level Coaches: Tom Bourdeau of Newfound, Rob McLaughlin of Salem, Jay McKenna of Winnacunnet, Jim Cilley of Belmont, Mike Rathgeber of Inter-Lakes, Mike Donnell of Franklin, David Smith of Coe-Brown, Mark Collins of Groveton, Greg Cotreau of Memorial Girls & Jim Hill of Monadnock.

 Each coach will be listed under the Division standings for the 2017-18 season.

 The schedule for the 5th Annual Coaches for a Cause Basketball Jamboree:

 Click for our jamboree preview

 12: Alvirne vs Somersworth

 1:30: Merrimack vs Lebanon

 3:00: Bedford vs Hollis-Brookline

 4:30: Manchester Memorial vs Berlin

 6:00: Portsmouth vs Kearsarge

 7:30: Exeter vs Pelham

 

The passing of Dave Huckins of Merrimack Valley basketball

 I wanted to comment on the passing of Merrimack Valley girls basketball coach Dave Huckins.

 The only person to ever win a state championship at Merrimack Valley as both a player and as a head coach passed away on September 10th after a yearlong battle with salivary gland cancer, leaving behind his wife and two daughters. His passing is a tremendous loss to the entire Concord basketball community.

 Ray Duckler of the Concord Monitor wrote a terrific tribute to Huckins (Click for Ray's article) that far exceeds anything I could write today but I couldn’t let his passing go without mention here.

 I only met Dave Huckins a few times in life but I’ve known who he is and what he was all about since I was a freshman in high school all the way back in 1987. Huckins was an all-state forward for some great Merrimack Valley teams, including the 1989 team that beat Con-Val in the Class I (Division II) championship game at UNH.

 I was at that game. I watched Huckins wave his crutches to the mass of people from the Concord area that had come to see a shorthanded Merrimack Valley team coached by Kevin O’Brien win the title without their best player.

 Huckins had badly rolled his ankle in the practice before the final and I went to Durham that day believing there was no way they were going to win without him. You see Huckins was the kind of player who, frankly, is very hard to find today. He was a very good outside shooter but he did his work driving to the basket or if they absolutely needed a basket, he’d post his man up and bully his way to the rim. There was a toughness to him and those Merrimack Valley teams you rarely see anymore as the game has become more perimeter oriented.

 Years after we both graduated I played on a few men’s league teams at the Green Street gym in Concord with Dave, his brother and a few of his former teammates. We wouldn't cross paths again for over 20 years but he again was a standout when he popped back into my life.

 Last year when we announced we were going to try to bring the same level of coverage to girls’ basketball in New Hampshire as we have with the boys I asked coaches to take a leap of faith. To support us by sending us their rosters and game statistics through the year or even with a paid registration to support our efforts to bring on new people to do all the work necessary to enter 90 rosters and stats for over 600 games. I had talked extensively with my friend Mike Heaney of Souhegan basketball about how we could make this happen and I knew if we were going to make an impact we needed the coaches’ to join with us.

 Most didn’t, Dave Huckins did immediately.

 Dave emailed me the very next day telling me how excited he was that we were going to cover the girls. He talked about his team at Merrimack Valley and asked me what he could do to help us build our coverage.

 Within a week he had registered to support us, sent over a roster and promised to send stats as well. We ended up covering his team when they battled Portsmouth (Highlights of Merrimack Valley vs Portsmouth) and when I heard of his illness months later I felt like I was punched in the stomach, even though I barely knew him.

 Dave Huckins came off to me as a person who led with his heart. The people who knew him best like Jason Smith of Brewster Academy basketball and his former coach Kevin O’Brien describe him in that exact way.

 We need more people in high school sports like Dave Huckins. It’s a loss for all of us that love it so much.

 On behalf of Pete, Jen, Jon, Justin, Eliot & I we want to send our deepest condolences to the Huckins family and all of his extended family & friends.

 

 

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