Souhegan boys trying to take the next step

Mike Heaney is getting ready for this third season as the head coach of the Souhegan High School boys basketball team.

The Sabers have come a long way in that time.

When he became the varsity coach before the 2008-09 season, Heaney was inheriting a Souhegan team that had won four games in the two previous seasons combined and had failed to make the Class I tournament both years. And after winning back-to-back titles in 2003 and 2004, Heaney was the Sabers’ fifth coach in four years.

“We haven’t accomplished anything since the last championship team,” Heaney said. “We went from a program that won championships to not hosting the tournament, to losing in the first round, to a couple of years not making the tournament.”

In Heaney’s first year, Souhegan started out 0-8 before winning six of its final 10 games to get into the tournament. A year ago, the Sabers started off strong, but faded down the stretch to go 10-8 before losing at Portsmouth in the first round.

This year, a lot of people are Division II are expecting big things from Souhegan, and the Sabers have taken notice.

“We’re trying to embrace the fact that people think we’re going to be good,” Heaney said. “It’s great that people are talking about us, but starting Friday, we haven’t accomplished anything. We need to prove to people that we’re worthy of them saying we’re a good team.”

Souhegan has an interesting group, according to the coach. The Sabers return a lot their scoring and rebound from a year ago, but a lot of those players are young.

“It’s weird that here we are three years later, and we’re young again,” Heaney said. “This is the first time that five or six kids who played for me before are back and they’re really good basketball players. We have kids who have year-round basketball players. We used to joke that we had really good soccer players, or volleyball players, or golfers, and basketball was their other sport. This year, the experience is in place and the talent is in place. We’re still a little bit young, but where we’re young, we’re young with basketball players.”

Leading the way for the Sabers are seniors Seth Cordts and Ryan Redmond, who has been a starter for Heaney for three years. The pair has played so much over the years that Heaney believes having them on the floor is like having another coach out there in uniform.

Also returning is junior Devin Gilligan, who started a year ago as a sophomore and has had a year to grow into the talented player people believe he can be.

“He’s bigger, stronger, more mature, more experienced,” Heaney said. “He should have a good year.”

Joining those three is sophomore point guard Brandon Len, who helped lead the junior varsity to an undefeated season a year ago. Len steps into the spot left open when last year’s point guard, Jack Nelson, moved to Chicago.

The Sabers also lost another starter when Wes Crowell decided to focus on football and transferred to Worcester Academy. Taking that spot in the lineup could either be one of Jake Kennedy, Sean McGrath or Ben Peterson. The Sabers will also have Zach Simmonds and Shaun McKenna coming off the bench.

“We’re almost a six-guard, six-big kind of team,” Heaney said. “We think Brandon has grabbed Jack’s role. We think Kennedy or McGrath can grab Wesley’s role. We had fall ball to look at that and the guys we expected to step up were stepping up.”

Souhegan will find out just how far those guys have stepped up when the Sabers head to Laconia for a 6:30 p.m. start Friday.