The Maine Basketball Hall of Fame will be hosting a coaching clinic in Bangor on Saturday that will provide an opportunity to learn from an experience-packed list of leaders from both the college and high school levels.
The clinic is being held at the Hollywood Casino’s Epic Ballroom, and will feature presentations by Winslow High School boy’s coach Ken Lindlof; Husson University women’s coach Kissy Walker; Colby College men’s coach Damien Strahorn; Matt MacKenzie of Eastern Maine Sports Academy and Results Basketball; Bates College women’s coach Alison Montgomery; and Max Good, who coached multiple teams in college and high school, including University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Bryant, Loyola Marymount and Maine Central Institute.
“They all jumped at the chance to just kind of give back to the game, give back to the coaches in Maine, the people in Maine,” Maine Basketball Hall of Fame Executive Director Todd Hanson said. “We live in a really special state in terms of basketball, where I don’t think thing’s really a secret. If people can help each other, they do. Our goal is just to grow the game and grow the knowledge of coaches, and hopefully make our product a better product.”
Registration begins at 8:15 a.m. Saturday and the program will kick off at 9 a.m.. The cost is $100 per attending coach or $250 for a coaching staff of three, and all proceeds will benefit the Hall of Fame. Attendees can sign up online or in person Saturday morning.
Hanson said the hall started the Bangor-based clinic last year, and has chosen to host it in the city to “give those coaches in rural Maine an opportunity to come out and hear from some of the best that our state has to offer.”
Hanson, who coached at Brunswick High School for 25 years before stepping down to take the role at the Hall of Fame, said he always found great benefit in out-of-state coaching clinics early in his career.
“I thought it would be really neat if we could bring it to Maine, to our Maine coaches,” Hanson said.
Strahorn will lead off the presentations Saturday by talking about offensive progressions. He has led the Colby Mules for 14 seasons.
Walker, who made history this past season by amassing more than 600-career wins, will then lead a section on how to teach basic actions that translate to the college level.
MacKenzie will be next and will be focusing on player development through skills-based workouts. MacKenzie is the longtime player development coach for Cooper and Ace Flagg.
Following lunch, Lindlof will focus on defensive drills. The current Winslow High School coach previously led the varsity team in Waterville for 21 years.
Montgomery will be next with an overview of offensive plays to use against man and zone defenses. Montgomery is a Bangor High School and Bowdoin College graduate who had led the Bates Bobcats for 10 seasons.
Good, who Hanson described as “like basketball royalty for coaches in Maine,” will be the final speaker of the clinic with a session about “random digressions for a 55-year college coach,” according to the event.
Those 45-minute presentations are scheduled to wrap up at 4:15 p.m. and will be followed by a coaches social that ends at 5 p.m.
Hanson said that the clinic goes beyond the X’s and O’s of the game, and seeks to help foster connections in the Maine coaching community while connecting them to Maine basketball history. Three of the coaching clinicians — Walker, Good and Lindlof — are already in the Hall of Fame.
The clinic is open to anyone at any level of coaching.
“You can never get enough of the fundamentals, and I think there will be things for everybody there,” Hanson said.
Hanson also agreed that this is a particularly exciting time for Maine basketball in general, with factors like the Flaggs’ success, a resurgent UMaine men’s program and a particularly engaging high school basketball tournament adding to the mix.
“I call it the Cooper Flagg effect. And not just to single out Cooper, but his brother Ace as well,” Hanson said. “I think there’s a lot of excitement about Ace going to the University of Maine next year. And I think that the run that coach [Chris] Markwood had this year at UMaine, getting one game away from the big dance, that galvanizes the whole state.”
Hanson also highlighted the pair of Class B state championships for the Caribou boys and girls this year, with the victorious teams from Aroostook County showing they can compete with the rest of the state.
“That’s what makes Maine special,” he said.
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