The stands were packed and the crowd was rocking Thursday night as the Madawaska boys basketball team punched its ticket to the Class C North regional final on Saturday.
It hasn’t always been this way.
“The stands have been empty in Madawaska for a long time, and now the boys are starting to bring life back into the game of basketball,” said Mim Gagnon, who has three sons Carter, Aiden and Owen on the team.
“There’s people from all over the state that have come to see this game,” she added. “They graduated from Madawaska, but they’ve moved away. So it brings everybody together here.”
The Madawaska boys netted an impressive 17-1 record during the regular season, and won their quarterfinal matchup Monday night in Bangor against a relentless Dexter squad. They won again Thursday night 46-36 against a hardworking Calais team that was coming off an upset win against second seed Machias.
The Madawaska fans were anything but upset Thursday night after their third-ranked team survived a second half push by No. 7 Calais.
“It’s nice to have the community support that we’ve had. I mean, our fans are phenomenal,” Madawaska coach Shawn Pelletier said Thursday night.
“We live four hours away and our section was pretty filled, so that was just great to see,” Pelletier added.
Junior guard Isaac Beaulieu provided some timely shooting for the Owls Thursday night, including five points in the fourth quarter and a team-high 15 for the game.
“One of the things that I like about our team is that we’re very unselfish, we like to get the ball moving, and tonight I just happened to have a lot of open shots,” Beaulieu said after the win.
Senior forward Sam Thibeault was a force around the rim once again on both offense and defense. The biggest of his 10 points may have been the dunk he threw down in the final minute of the game to leave little doubt about the win.
But it wasn’t always a sure thing for Madawaska on Thursday. They took a comfortable 22-8 lead into halftime, but Calais battled back thanks in part to a blistering second half from senior guard Kaeson Dana. His 16 points in the second half helped make it a two-point game with a minute left in the third quarter.
With that flurry of great shooting, it seemed like Calais might overwhelm the Owls in the second half. But Madawaksa responded.
“After that, we were like, ‘We’re not letting this happen.’ So we didn’t,” Thibeault explained after the game. “And we just responded back with intensity and hard work.”
And their fans rewarded that hard work with supportive intensity from the stands.
“Hitting a three or when Sam threw down that dunk, just having that support behind you and hearing that roar is an awesome feeling,” Beaulieu said.
The junior said the amount of support from his community has grown over his three years.
“I remember in our hometown, our biggest games of the season there would be maybe 100 people in the stands,” Beaulieu said, “And to look over and see that section filled was awesome.”
Until the win earlier in the week, Madawaska hadn’t won a basketball tournament quarterfinal since 2006, Pelletier said on Monday.
“It’s brought the town together,” Gagnon continued about the team. “They left Madawaska yesterday, they had a police escort, the firetrucks, the whole thing. And everybody was out on the side of the road cheering them on.”
