Basketball tournament time is great. You get to catch up with friends and neighbors as the towns clear out to gather at the Augusta Civic Center to cheer on the high school teams during school vacation week.

In my case, I also get to catch up with some of the former coaches I used to coach against in the Mountain Valley Conference. My girls junior varsity and varsity teams had success against some of those coaches while others weren’t so hospitable toward the Lady Seahawks.

I would have to research how many tournaments I have covered, mostly as a photographer, in the many years I have been trucking to the ACC, and how many tournament games I have seen as a fan.

Keith Alley did the bulk of the writing for the newspaper for the tournament games – both boys and girls – in both Augusta and Bangor for over two decades. And John Edwards and I shared the photography load for about as long.

I began going to the tournament at the ACC in 1973, the year it opened. I saw Jonesport-Beals smother Wiscasset and Sumner smoke Yarmouth that year. Both of those Eastern teams were fantastic. I have seen 18-0 teams get beat in the quarterfinals and some amazing comebacks over the years. The Dirigo and Jay girls had a few epic battles in the 1990s and who can forget the sixth-seeded Boothbay boys upsetting third-seeded Waynflete in 2018, 65-64, after the Seahawks trailed by 11 late in the third quarter? And they nearly knocked off second-seeded Winthrop in the semifinal, losing 61-60.

Seahawk Nation will return to the ACC on Thursday, Feb. 20 to face those Flyers again – No. 3 Boothbay vs. No. 2 Waynflete. Should be quite a show!

And I am writing this just hours before the Lady Seahawks open their defense of the state championship on Tuesday afternoon. Let’s hope both teams get to the finals on Saturday.

Go Boothbay!