The gymnasium at Nokomis Regional High School and Middle School has seen plenty of electric moments from hometown hero Cooper Flagg.
And it got one more Wednesday night, as New Balance hosted a NBA draft watch party to celebrate the Newport native’s ascension to the highest level of basketball.
Flagg was selected first overall by the Dallas Mavericks, and the community that has been rooting for him for years showed up to cheer him on once again.
“It means everything,” school principal Mary Nadeau said Wednesday night. “Seriously, what school gets to experience this?”
“We are just euphoric,” she added.
Nadeau, like so many in the Newport area, knows the Flagg family well. She even coached Flagg’s mother at one point.
“I actually was just texting Cooper’s mom Kelly, just saying, I’m just so excited,” Nadeau said.
The Newport faithful have kept a close eye on Flagg during his improbable rise to the top. And The Flaggs have maintained close ties with the community. A few minutes before draft began, the watch party crowd got to watch a short video from Flagg thanking Newport for its continued support.
Nadeau said the school community is appreciative, both of the moment and the way the Flaggs have remained connected to their roots.
“In small town Maine we think we’re all extended family. So we’re just so appreciative, too, of the Flagg’s, that they’ve kept us close.”
And that close proximity to an unprecedented basketball talent is already helping young Mainers recalibrate their own expectations.
Hunter Thompson and Cooper Hendricks are rising 7th graders at Nokomis, and Flagg’s success is already “making us want to train harder,” according to Thompson. Hendricks called Flagg “an inspiration” after the first pick was announced.
“Just that he’s a kid from Maine, and we’re just kids from Maine too,” Thompson added. “So I feel like we can do it.”
And it wasn’t just the local students who were there and enthralled Wednesday night.
Derrick Gould, a sophomore and basketball player at Winthrop High School, noted that Flagg was the “number one draft pick for a reason” and highlighted the statewide impact Flagg is having.
“I think it means a lot for the state itself, as well as the small town community. I feel like he’s brought a lot of motivation to Maine basketball players everywhere,” Gould said. Not only from Newport, anywhere in the state of Maine. Like up north, down south where I am. Anywhere, honestly, he’s brought a lot of inspiration.”
That next generation of Maine basketball players were already showing off their skills Wednesday night, with several games of knockout being played in the Nokomis gym as the audience prepared for Flagg to make history.
Nine-year-old Krew Wentworth of Plymouth won one of those games, surprising himself with his success.
“I did not think I was going to win,” Wentworth said afterward.
Plenty of people probably didn’t think a kid from Maine could captivate the basketball like Flagg has, either, but here we are. And he continues to push the bounds of what’s possible for a kid from Maine, and inspire others through his example.
“It means anybody can do it. He’s got the aggressiveness and he’s got the drive to keep practicing and keep going,” Kyle Wentworth, Krew’s father who is also a basketball coach, said Wednesday night. “And that’s what we tell all the kids, just watch him play and play like him.”
There may never be another Cooper Flagg. But as he starts his NBA career, there is already a legion of Maine kids looking to replicate the hard work that helped him soar higher than any basketball player in the state’s history.
