"Recovery" day

President's Day is always a so-called "break" from the tournament madness, where I swap back into my track beat for the state championships.
After seeing the good (Grace Maclean setting a state record in the HJ for Bangor and Steven Rice winning the hurdles for Brewer) and the this-is-getting-old (Scarborough winning another girls state championship), I got as much sleep as I could after returning from Portland, bracing for another 3-game day in Bangor.
The first pitted the Calais and Madawaska boys. Oddly, I always seem to get the Calais boys' games early in the tourney, which isn't a bad thing, since Eddie Leeman is a great guy to deal with.
Cam Shorey, Calais' big man, is an absolute house who can do it all. At 6'4, he can drive to the basket, penetrate, and even hit the 3-pointer, and I didn't think Madawaska could keep up.
I was right, and the defending state champions ran away with a victory. I'm not the biggest fan of 'back-to-back' games, but I did have about an hour between this game and my next one, so I managed to get my Web version out of there and grab my first slice of Auditorium pizza of the week for lunch.
My next game was a girls' matchup featuring Calais (again) and Woodland.
Having plenty of time before tip-off, I decided to chat with both coaches and get some insight on what it would take to win.
These two are rivals that split during the regular season, so I figured I'd be in for quite a show.
It turned out I was correct, and this game had the intensity of a regional championship game, not a quarterfinal. The Blue Devils and Dragons went back-and-forth all day, prompting me to give Calais a nickname later on in the week.
Even though Woodland has a good defense, they lack in the post, and Nicole Osborne, a Calais 6-footer, took advantage, recording a double-double.
In the final seconds of overtime, she was hacked under the basket going up for a put-back, and easily sank both FTs as Calais won 58-56. Apparently, I have the midas touch (so far) when it comes to Calais.
I knew my last game of the night wouldn't top that one, but I was wrong.
Later on, Foxcroft and Stearns were featured in my final game of the day, a 4-5 boys matchup.
As far as these schools go, my heart was in interesting places. As we all know, my dad, uncles, aunt and cousins all went to Stearns, and I've dated two girls (one pleasantly, one not so much), from FA. You gotta love basketball, it really brings people together.
Anyways, this game had all the drama that the girls game in the afternoon did, with free throws, once again, being the difference.
Josiah Richard sank a couple of freebees for FA in the final seconds after being hand-checked on a drive down the lane, and the Ponies held on for a dramatic two-point victory.
With another three-game day the next day, I needed sleep big-time, so it was time to catch up on some with a 5 a.m. wake-up call for a 6 a.m. workout. But, I instead headed to the bar to celebrate a friend's birthday, and drank a little more than I should have. Oh well, good times never seemed so good, even during tourney week!