Falmouth boys basketball coach Dave Halligan earned his 600th career victory on Tuesday when the Navigators beat Westbrook 70-65 in Falmouth. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

Dave Halligan has 600 career wins coaching high school basketball. This is the story of one of them.

On Feb. 20, 1997, Halligan’s Falmouth boys basketball team beat Winthrop in the Western Class C semifinals, 44-42, at the Augusta Civic Center. Up to that point in the season, the then-Yachtsmen (Falmouth changed its nickname to the Navigators in 2021) roasted Class C opponents by an average of 37 points. Winthrop was different, though. The Ramblers were strong. Even with the graduation of Mr. Basketball winner TJ Caouette, who had moved on to Villanova and is in the team picture of the best players to come out of Maine, the Ramblers were still a force.

“We beat TJ twice (the previous season),” said Mike Mastropaolo, a Falmouth senior in 1997 who followed Caouette as Maine’s Mr. Basketball. “They played us tough. They had lost to us so many times, they were up for us.”

Falmouth led by two points, 21-19, at halftime, and by 13 in the third quarter before the Ramblers rallied to cut their deficit to two points in the fourth. Falmouth never relinquished the lead, but it didn’t pull away, either. Winthrop’s Eric Lough sank a pair of free throws with 2:16 left, cutting the deficit back to two, 44-42. Falmouth tried to take the air out of the ball and stall but committed a turnover, as often happens when you ask teenagers to stop playing basketball and start watching the clock.

The Ramblers had one final chance to complete their comeback. Falmouth’s strong defense forced Winthrop’s leading scorer that game, Lough, to pass to Adam Packard for a 3-point attempt from the right corner. Packard’s shot went off the front of the rim, and Falmouth survived its only close game against a Class C opponent all season.

“It just bounced our way,” Halligan said at the time.

It has bounced Falmouth’s way a lot. Under a good coach, it usually does.

“The guy has positively impacted so many people in our town,” Mastropaolo said. “Think of all the student athletes he’s impacted in a big way. … As a dad, I have three boys, and I’m hoping they can find teams and coaches who can impact them the way Halligan did with me. Wins are amazing, but you have to look at those relationships.”

The Yachtsmen were prepared for a close game because Halligan made sure they were. Falmouth routinely played in the Portland Christmas tournament over the holiday break. They took on opponents like Portland and South Portland, schools much larger than Falmouth at the time.

What Mastropaolo remembers most about that game is the collision he had with Winthrop’s 6-foot-8 center, Arben Mulay. It cracked such a cut over his eye that Mastropaolo went right to a doctor’s office for stitches after the team bus returned to Falmouth.

Falmouth’s Mike Mastropaolo celebrates with his teammates after they beat Narraguagus, 83-56, to win the Class C state championship on Feb. 28, 1997. Press Herald file photo by John Ewing

During the playoff run in 1997, that two-point win over Winthrop was the only one of Falmouth’s four victories that was close. There was a 77-35 win over Freeport in the regional quarterfinals, and a 71-48 victory over Hall-Dale in the regional final. The Class C state final, which the Yachtsmen lost a year earlier to Hodgdon, was an 83-56 rout of Narraguagus.

Often, success just needs a nudge to become tradition.

That one nail-biter against Winthrop set off a Falmouth run of excellence. The state championship of 1997 was the first of three Gold Balls in a row for Falmouth. Over that three-season run, Falmouth played just two more playoff games decided by 10 points or less: a 57-47 win over Boothbay in the 1998 Western Class C semifinals, and a 63-57 win over Boothbay in the 1999 regional final.

It’s not a coincidence that Boothbay was coached by IJ Pinkham, one of the two Maine high school basketball coaches Halligan joined in the exclusive 600-win club with Tuesday’s 70-65 win over Westbrook. Iron sharpens iron.

Mastropaolo remembers the little things Halligan did to prepare the team to succeed, like playing top shelf competition every chance it got. He also remembers how important Halligan was to his recruiting process. In the seasons prior to Mastropalo’s senior year, Caouette and Rumford’s Andy Bedard opened the eyes of college coaches everywhere to the talent in Maine. Still, even though he was a Mr. Maine Basketball winner, Mastropaolo had to go to prep school for a year before he was offered a scholarship to Bentley, an NCAA Division II program.

“Maine was a challenging place to get college coaches to recruit. … I think about him a lot, for sure. He helped me get through that whole process,” Mastropaolo said of Halligan. “I’m a partner at a private equity firm. I feel like he helped set me up for success.”

Halligan, who also has more than 500 wins as Falmouth’s boys soccer coach, has been a force for good in the lives of so many students over the last four decades. Mastropaolo’s story is just one of them.