The soccer season never ends for Falmouth midfielder Caitlin Bucksbaum.

Bucksbaum is playing her first season for the defending Class B champions after spending last spring playing for Ardrey Kell High School, which reeled off 25 wins before losing to Leesville Road in the Class AAAA girls’ soccer final in North Carolina.

Falmouth is actually Bucksbaum’s third high school team. In the fall of 2009, she played for Rutland, Vt., as a freshman.

“We moved to North Carolina for my dad’s job,” she said. “He decided not to take the job, but I was on a soccer team that was really good so I decided to stay down there for a year.”

Bucksbaum spent the last school year with her mother in Charlotte, N.C., while her father, Dr. Mark Bucksbaum, director for rehabilitative services at Maine General Medical Center in Augusta, moved to Maine.

Now the family is together again, but Bucksbaum said she got a lot out of playing in North Carolina, where high school soccer is a spring sport.

“I think the soccer in Maine and Vermont is pretty similar, but in North Carolina it’s a lot more competitive,” she said.

Wally LeBlanc, who has coached girls’ soccer for 20 years, is glad to have Bucksbaum with the Yachtsmen.

“She showed up about a week before the season started and we wondered how she would mesh,” said LeBlanc, in his first season at Falmouth. “She immediately connected with the other girls. She’s kind of quiet, but she’s very, very smart soccer-wise, and I think the girls responded quite well to that.”

After 11 games, Bucksbaum has nine goals and a team-high 10 assists.

“She’s probably in the best shape of anyone I’ve ever coached,” LeBlanc said. “She’s passionate about soccer, and she knows fitness is a major part of making a better player. She wants to do whatever it takes to be the best soccer athlete she can be.”

MATT ANDREASEN is following his father into high school coaching.

Andreasen, son of Greely boys’ coach Mike Andreasen, is in his first season as the North Yarmouth Academy girls’ coach.

“It makes me proud he respects enough of what I do to want to follow and emulate me,” said the elder Andreasen, in his 14th year as the Greely coach.

Last fall the younger Andreasen, a 2010 University of Maine graduate who works as a behavioral specialist at Sherwood Heights Elementary in Auburn, was an assistant to Greely girls’ coach Michael Kennedy.

“I’ve been really fortunate because I grew up with my father and I worked under Mike Kennedy,” he said. “I’ve worked at camps with some of the best. I’ve worked with Mike Hagerty at Yarmouth and Dave Halligan at Falmouth. I’ve had so many great influences.”

OCEANSIDE COACH Darryl Townsend is one win from 200 for his career. Townsend’s teams had 192 wins in 17 years at Georges Valley High, the Thomaston school that merged with Rockland this year. The Mariners are 7-2-1.

Staff Writer Paul Betit can be contacted at 791-6424 or at: pbetit@pressherald.com

Twitter: PaulBetitPPH

 

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