WALDOBORO, Maine — Nick DePatsy loves basketball, and he loves teaching and coaching kids.
Those basic facts may explain why he has spent 32 years as a high school basketball coach and why, for the 17th straight year, he is taking his Medomak Valley Panthers boys varsity team to the annual Class B South basketball tournament.
“Any coach will tell you, you have to have some talent,” DePatsy said as he waited for practice to begin. "Got to have the horses to win the race. And fortunately for me, I’ve had a lot of good players put the time in so I’ve been fortunate that way."
Winning seasons have become the norm at Medomak Valley. This year, the team goes into the tournament with a 15-3 record, an achievement that earned Coach DePatsy Class B South Coach of the Year honors.
That award might have been helped by another achievement: in late December, DePatsy notched his 400th career win as a coach.
“I don’t concentrate on that stuff, I like to push my program,” was his response to a question about hitting the 400 mark (now it's 410). “I like to develop kids, I want my program to be successful, want them to be successful.”
Junior Gabe Lash and his teammates did pay attention to their coach’s tally.
“Definitely cool. I don’t know how many coaches in Maine will get that, but growing up with him and seeing that happen was pretty cool," Lash said.
Most of the players on the Panthers team have grown up with DePatsy. Besides coaching the high school, he also oversees Waldoboro’s pee wee basketball program, which has become the feeder system for the series of successful boys and girls high school teams.
“We were all very happy for him, because he has always helped us all the way from pee wees,” senior Kory Donlin said. “We’ve all known him since we were really young.”
Players and coaches all say he pushes them hard to master basketball skills, with Lash referring to him as an “old school coach” because of DePatsy stressing fundamentals—including the need to always practice their shots.
“A lot of people ask me, are the games exciting? They are, but to me, it's practicing. That’s my love," DePatsy admitted. "I enjoy the practice, that’s where you’re teaching, that’s where you’re developing kids.”
The approach has apparently worked for Medomak Valley, and most of the teams he coached previously at Madison, Lincoln Academy, and Georges Valley.
But all those career wins, as well as this year’s 15-3 record, get put in the books for the moment because it's tournament time. DePatsy has focused on preparing his team both physically and mentally for the win-or-go-home reality of tournament games.
He has been there before.
“Anything can happen. One year we were 18-0 and got kicked out in the first round. I’ve also had teams 10-8 and wound up in the regional final," DePatsy said.
As for the 410 wins, DePatsy plays that down as a minor achievement and points out he is the 31st Maine coach to surpass the 400 career win mark, though many of those are no longer coaching. Seven coaches are listed as having more than 500 wins, including Falmouth’s Dave Halligan, who began this season with 583 career victories. Halligan may hit the 600-win mark in the tournament, which would make him only the third coach in Maine basketball history to reach that level.
DePatsy mentioned all that and pointed out Halligan’s success, even as he prepared his own Panthers team to meet Yarmouth in the first tournament game.
That contest will tell him if all the practice pays off.