Maine

Girls compete in Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange for the first time

Published

1 year ago

August 9, 2024

Girls compete in Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange for the first time

Wrestlers from Maine warm up on the mat before a Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange meet last month at Northwest High School in Grand Island, Nebraska. This year marked the first time girls wrestling was involved in the annual series. Contributed photo by Ciara Farias

For 40 years, the Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange has been one of the Pine Tree State’s most anticipated high school mat events.

This summer, the annual dual series received a twist. For the first time in its history, girls teams were pitted against one another.

Last month, a group of the state’s top female grapplers made the trip for three dual meets — two at Pierce Junior/Senior High School in Pierce, Nebraska, and one at Northwest High School in Grand Island, Nebraska — against a team of Nebraska all-star wrestlers.

“I enjoyed it. Overall, it was a really good trip,” said Gardiner Area High School senior Ciara Farias. “It was definitely worth going. … I’m glad this was the first (girls team) to go. It was definitely a good experience.”

The boys series was hosted by Maine in early July at four different sites: Massabesic High School in Waterboro, Camden-Rockport Middle School, Dirigo High School in Dixfield and Noble High School in North Berwick.

The Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange was founded in 1984 by longtime Winslow coach and referee Wally LaFountain, a member of both the Maine Wrestling Hall of Fame and Maine Amateur Wrestling Alliance Hall of Fame. LaFountain, who led Winslow High School to state championships in 1958 and 1960, started the event as a goodwill series to promote and grow the sport in both states. The series flips host states each year.

The Maine all-star team was comprised of the top talent in the state, including Zady Paige and Piper Leone of Belfast; Kathleen Cote, Delaney Frost and Hannah Perro of Noble; Savannah Thyng of Massabesic; Lily Soper of Bucksport; Sophie Noyes of Skowhegan and Farias of Gardiner. The team also featured Oceanside’s Maddie Ripley wrestling in her final Maine-related event.

Ripley, the only female grappler in state history to win an open state tournament, a feat she achieved in 2023 and 2024, graduated in the spring. The 2023-24 Varsity Maine Female Athlete of the Year will wrestle next year at Wyoming Seminary, a prep school in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania. It’s considered the best prep wrestling program in the country, and both the boys and girls teams prevailed at the 2023-24 National Prep Wrestling Championships in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Gardiner Area High School senior Ciara Farias, right, competes in a match during the Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange last month. This is the first year girls wrestling is involved in the annual series. Contributed photo by Ciara Farias

“There was definitely a lot of good talent that was on my team,” Farias said. “They were definitely made up of some of the best. Having them there and their support, cheering us on and us cheering them on, was really good. When we warmed up before the tournaments, we talked about what moves we intended on working on during matches, and we’d work on those. When we warmed up, we had good wrestling partners — that helped us.”

The inclusion in the Maine-Nebraska Exchange continues a boom period in girls wrestling within the state of Maine. A total of 97 wrestlers competed at the girls wrestling state championships, the highest total ever for the tournament, and nearly double the amount who competed in 2023.

“It’s just so cool to see the girls and be a part of it. I think this is what so many girls have wanted for so long,” said Perro, who won the 100-pound title at the Maine girls wrestling championships and helped the Knights win the tournament’s first team title. “And now that it’s actually here, it brings up so many opportunities for girls. They don’t want to wrestle boys. … When I was younger, girls wrestling wasn’t that big, and if it was, it was in freestyle. It’s really cool to see it grow in folkstyle in high school.

“In Nebraska, they have straight-up girls wrestling teams on their high school team. I think Noble may have (its own) wrestling team next year — that’s what I keep hearing.”

Like Maine, girls wrestling is growing in Nebraska. The Nebraska School Activities Association voted to make girls wrestling a sanctioned high school sport in 2021, and had its own girls state tournament by 2022.

“It was different a lot different, they did some different style stuff,” Farias said of facing Nebraska wrestlers. “They have a lot more girls who wrestle down there. One of the coaches was talking to us when we got there. There’s 50 wrestlers (the school had) in one wrestling room, and 22 of them were girls.”

“They were really strong and quick,” Perro added. “A lot of them train year-round, and a lot of them do lifting programs through their school. It’s almost mandatory (there), and I feel that’s a big difference. For us, it’s highly spoken of but it’s not like you have to do it.”

Team Maine sits for a photo before the Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange last month. Contributed photo by Ciara Farias

Perro said the Nebraska wrestlers also presented a different style on the mat.

“They’re really heavy on hand ties,” Perro said. “I feel like that was something we all tried to expect going into our matches. Watching each other wrestling, that’s all that we noticed. All they would do was grab your wrist (at the start of a match) and that’s how they would get control at first. In Maine, a lot of people go to tie up first, but they were really big (tying up) the hands.”

Nebraska swept all three days of competition, winning the duals 56-16, 61-30 and 49-24.

It wasn’t all work for the Maine team, however. While in Nebraska, the group had plenty of opportunities to play, including camping, fishing, riding ATVs and a zip line over a river.

“We went to a few different water parks,” Farias said. “We stayed at a cabin, we got to camp, have a fire. Staying at the cabin and hanging out by the river all day (was the most fun).”

“There was no water there — like in Maine, where everywhere you drive there’s at least a little pond or something,” Perro said. “When we were there, we had to drive 2½-3 hours just to get to a river. … There were cows in the river, which I had never seen before. It was so many acres of land and cows everywhere, that was probably my favorite part.”

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Maine

Maine Mariners add two defenseman

Published

8 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Defensemen Max Wanner was re-assigned to the Maine Mariners from the Providence Bruins on Thursday. Defenseman Michael Underwood was also re-assigned to Maine.

Wanner, 22, was acquired by the Boston Bruins when they traded Trent Federic to Edmonton last March. He played in 15 games for the AHL Providence Bruins at the end of last season, and seven this season.

Underwood returns for his second stint with the Mariners. He appeared in 67 games with Maine last season.

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Maine

Maine libraries scramble for books after distributor closes

Published

20 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Maine libraries scramble for books after distributor closes

Rosanne Barnes, an adult services reader’s advisor, shelves new fiction books at Portland Public Library on Wednesday. (Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer)

Some hot new titles have been arriving late at Maine libraries in recent months, after the closing of one the country’s major library book distributors.

Baker & Taylor, based in North Carolina, began winding down its operations in the fall and expects to close entirely this month. The company’s demise has left many Maine libraries scrambling to buy books through other sources, including local book stores, and to endure deliveries taking twice as long.

That means patrons expecting to get new books on or near publication dates are waiting longer to start turning pages.

At the Portland Public Library, “Heart The Lover” by Maine author Lily King wasn’t available to patrons until nearly a month after its Sept. 30 publication date, even though it was ordered in July. At the Libby Memorial Library in Old Orchard Beach, John Grisham’s Oct. 21 release “The Widow” took six weeks to arrive. Staff at the Kennbunk Free Library weren’t sure how long they’d have to wait for “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans, so they bought two copies at a local store, Octopus Bookshop. As of this week, there were 28 holds on the book.

“Baker & Taylor closing has totally rocked the library world nationwide. It has long been the preferred vendor among many Maine libraries, and their closure is certainly having an impact on us,” said Sarah Skawinski, associate director of the Portland Public Library and president of the Maine Library Association. “I think we’re over the hump now, though.”

Skawinski and other librarians say Baker & Taylor had been having problems getting books from publishers and had been slow with some deliveries, a problem that began during the COVID pandemic. Last year when it became apparent Baker & Taylor was likely going out of business, many libraries switched to the nation’s other major distributor, Ingram Content Group, as well as another company called Brodart Library Supplies. But with increased demand, both those companies have been slow in filling some orders in the last couple months, too.

Industry publications reported that Baker & Taylor’s problems were mostly financial, beginning in the pandemic and included the failed acquisition of another company. An email to Baker & Taylor asking for more information on its closure was not answered Wednesday.

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Aspen Kraushaar checks books in at the front desk at the Kennebunk Free Library on Wednesday. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)

Not every Maine library bought the majority of its books from Baker & Taylor; some used other distibutors instead. Staff at the Waterville Public Library, for instance, say they rarely used the company and weren’t impacted. The Lithgow Public Library in Augusta was only getting about four books a month from Baker & Taylor, said Director Sarah Curra Schultz-Nielsen. Those included children’s books, reference books and travel guides. Finding other distributors for those books, including Brodart and Bookshop, a company that sells mainly to independent bookstores, has been “mildly inconvenient” for staff and has not impacted patrons, Schultz-Nielsen said.

But other libraries used Baker & Taylor for most of its new releases, including fiction and non-fiction, as well to replacements for worn-out books. Stephen King’s books, for instance, have to be replaced pretty regularly, some librarians said.

The Portland Public Library had been ordering about 1,000 items a month from Baker & Taylor, mostly printed books. The library has about 359,000 physical items in its collection. Now, new books are coming to the library from Ingram, but will take maybe four weeks to arrive, compared to one to two weeks when Baker & Taylor was running smoothly.

And there is added work for librarians: While Baker & Taylor sent books that had already been catalogued and ready to be shelved, with bar codes and spine labels, Ingram is not yet offering that service, said Nicole Harkins, cataloging librarian at the Portland library.

“Patrons are aware it’s taking longer and they’re being patient,” Harkins said.

Kennebunk Free Library also switched to Ingram, and staff are spending more time prepping books, including putting protective plastic covers on them, said Allison Atkins, assistant director and head of adult services. Atkins said library staff wrote about their “book ordering troubles” in a library newsletter and on social media, so patrons would understand why new books were slow to arrive. The library used to get about 100 books a month from Baker & Taylor and despite still being “way behind” on new books, patrons have been patient, Atkins said.

For smaller libraries with smaller staffs, finding a new supplier is not always easy. Baker & Taylor was the major books supplier for Davis Memorial Library in Limington. The staff there is so small that they didn’t have time to research or compare new suppliers, so they waited until early this month, said Heidi Libby, the library’s director. As a result, the library has very few new arrivals on its shelves right now and has been filling the “new book” shelves with donated books as well as ordering from Amazon.

Several librarians said this week that local book stores have been a big help during this period, getting books quickly and pricing them affordably. Sherman’s Maine Coast Bookshops, which has 10 stores across the state, saw its sales to local libraries increase from $50,000 in 2024 to nearly $100,000 in 2025, said Jeff Curtis, owner and CEO of Sherman’s.

The Auburn Public Library would sometimes get more than 300 books a month from Baker & Taylor, including books for adults, teens, and children, as well as fiction and nonfiction as well as some large print books and CDs, said Nancy O’Toole, collections manager at the library.

When Baker & Taylor started having problems, the library bought books from Amazon and the local Bull Moose music and book store chain. Now, with Baker & Taylor closing, the library has switched to Ingram, but has seen delivery delays as that company has been inundated with new customers. This week the library got an order of books that were released in November, including “Exit Strategy” by Lee Child and Andrew Child, “The Seven Rings” by Nora Roberts and “Return of the Spider” by James Patterson.

“The hope is that now that the holidays are over, shipping from Ingram will expedite. But just to be safe, we are choosing to buy certain books elsewhere, including titles by big-name authors, popular series, or anything tied to a fast-approaching holiday,” said O’Toole. “Patrons want to see those titles on the shelf in a timely manner, and we want to make sure we fulfill those expectations.”

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Maine

Maine mill accepts N.B. wood again, but producers still struggle to stay afloat | CBC News

Published

1 day ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Maine mill accepts N.B. wood again, but producers still struggle to stay afloat | CBC News

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Equipment at Woodland Pulp in Maine roared back to life in mid-December after a 60 day pause in operations, and now one of the state’s largest mills is again accepting wood from New Brunswick producers.

“On Monday, we restarted purchasing fibre for the mill,” company spokesperson Scott Beal said.

“We’re back in the market. We are bringing in some fibre from suppliers in Canada, hardwood and chips.”

The general manager of the Carleton Victoria Forest Products Marketing Board says the news is welcome but not nearly enough to help embattled private woodlot owners in the province.

An aerial view of the Woodland Pulp LLC plant in Baileyville, Maine. — Woodland Pulp, based in Baileyville, Maine, stopped buying Canadian timber in October because of added costs borne out of a 10 per cent tariff U.S. President Donald Trump slapped on timber imports. (Submitted by Scott Beal)

“Everything is good news at this point, but it is not as good as it could be,” Kim Jensen said. “We’re not back where we were.”

With sales down by about two-thirds from last year, Jensen said some woodlot owners are deciding to pack it up, while others struggle on.

“We have had some older ones who’ve left, they’ve just, they’ve had enough and they’ve left,” she said.

“The people who have invested in the business, have bought processors and forwarders, they have to stay in business. And if you have $1,000,000 worth of equipment there, your payments are $40,000 to $60,000 a month and you have to work. You can’t just go somewhere else and get a job.”

Kim Jensen stands outside in a wooded area. — Kim Jensen, the general manager of the Carleton Victoria Forest Products Marketing Board, said private woodlot owners have lost about two-thirds of their sales compared with a year ago. (Submitted by Kim Jensen)

Duty rates on New Brunswick wood were set at 35 per cent in September, when U.S. President Donald Trump announced an additional 10 per cent tariff on lumber imports.

The sudden increase was too much for Woodland Pulp to bear. The mill relied on New Brunswick wood for about a third of its supply prior to October.

“It certainly adds cost to the business and, you know, like other wood users, I mean we’re always looking and hoping and trying to source fibre at the least cost,” Beal told CBC News in October.

The Baileyville-based mill has rehired all of the 144 people laid off during its two month shut-down, and Beal said it will likely take some time to ramp up to accept the amount of wood it previously did.

And with the difficult and uncertain tariff environment, Beal said, it’s hard to say how long the mill would be able to continue purchasing Canadian wood.

“It’s a very challenging pulp market,” he said.

“The tariffs remain in place. That hasn’t changed. So it’s not reasonable to think that that won’t be a headwind for the business.”

The federal government did create a $1.25 billion fund to help the industry survive, but Jensen says that hasn’t meant support for individual private woodlot owners.

In October, Jensen told CBC News that sales of timber by the marketing board’s members totalled about $1 million for all of 2024. They have fallen to about $200,000 over the past 12 months.

And the cost of cross-border business has continued to rise.

Before Woodland Pulp stopped taking Canadian timber, the company had a lumberyard in Florenceville ,where producers could drop off wood. Woodland would then take responsibility for shipping it the rest of the way to the mill.

Now it’s up to individual producers to source transportation and to arrange a broker to help meet cross-border requirements. That’s adding between $60 and $100 per load of timber heading to the U.S.

“The markets are tightening up, and the prices are going down, and you can only go down so far before it’s just done,” Jensen said.

“A mill can stop and start up, maybe. But a private guy who loses his equipment, he’s lost everything. He’s not coming back.”

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