When the RSU 39 School Board voted to close Limestone Community School’s high school in order to save $601,000, that left the Maine School of Science and Mathematics on its own.
Limestone and MSSM had pooled their students to field high school athletic teams.
With Limestone students in grades 9-12 now attending Caribou High School or paying tuition to go somewhere else — such as neighboring Fort Fairfield High School — that left LCS/MSSM athletic administrator Sarah Stackhouse contemplating the future of MSSM athletics.
She conducted a survey asking students which sports they would like to play and a committee was formed to examine the survey and come up with an athletics curriculum.
The results of those efforts are that the Maine School of Science and Mathematics will offer boys and girls cross country, boys and girls soccer, nordic skiing, volleyball and boys and girls track and field. Their swimmers will continue to swim for the cooperative Carlisle team, which includes students from Presque Isle and Caribou high schools.
MSSM, which has 153 students, has adopted Penguins as its nickname. Limestone Community School/MSSM had been the Eagles.
“It was incredibly challenging, building programs from scratch,” said Stackhouse. “The kids made it clear athletics are very important to them and my job is to make sure they can continue to compete.”
MSSM is a magnet school composed of boarding students from all over Maine, along with some international students. It has a different academic regimen compared to public schools.
Stackhouse said they won’t offer basketball because students receive a three-week Christmas break and then during the first two weeks of January, “they can take an internship or travel on a school-sponsored trip.”
However, they can also stay on campus and take an intensive two-week course.
Those scheduling concerns would have interfered with MSSM’s ability to field basketball teams.
The boys and girls soccer teams will each play an eight-game schedule.
Most schools play 14 games.
“I don’t think you’ll ever see us play 14 games. Ten or 12 would be the most. Our kids have some afternoon and evening classes so it’s hard to balance athletics and academics if you have to miss so many classes,” said Stackhouse.
“Our kids literally have to be excused from class to go to a game,” pointed out Stackhouse.
Numbers were an issue for the girls soccer team at the outset, but that has been remedied, according to Stackhouse.
“We have over 20 on the boys soccer team but we were little unsure of the girls team and had to cancel a scrimmage because we didn’t have the numbers. But some girls on the cross country team offered to help out and some girls who had never played soccer before came out because they wanted to make sure we had a team. Now we have 16 girls on the team,” he said.
The Maine School of Science and Mathematics teams both were scheduled to play Monday at East Grand in Danforth.