When Gary Fifield arrived in southern Maine nearly two decades ago, he wasn’t sure how long he’d be staying.
“When we came here I was thinking it was probably a stepping stone,” he says.
But Fifield, the head women’s basketball coach at the University of Southern Maine, stuck around, and in his 19 years the program has seen incredible success: an overall record of 488-78, 16 conference championships and 18 NCAA postseason appearances.
This season the Huskies have compiled a 31-1 mark and will be playing Friday and Saturday in the Division III Final Four for the fifth time, looking for their first national title.
“We’ve had a tremendous run,” says the 53-year-old coach.
Fifield lives in Buxton, which he calls “a great area to raise a family.” He and his wife, Mary, recently watched their son, Ashley, graduate from USM.
“We’ve found a home,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”
After growing up in Vermont and graduating from UVM, Fifield coached a couple of high school boys hoop teams. At a summer basketball camp, Tim Cohane, then the men’s coach at Dartmouth, asked Fifield if he had any aspirations to coach at the college level. Fifield said that he didn’t, but Cohane called back the next year and Fifield served as an assistant at Dartmouth for a season, and then as head coach at Vermont Technical College before heading back into the high school ranks.
Then in the fall of 1987, Fifield came to USM. He found that his female athletes were “hungry to get better” and “more receptive to instruction” than males.
The Huskies and their new coach were immediately successful, earning their first trip to the Final Four. The team returned in 1998, 2000 and again last season, when they lost to eventual national champion Millikin, 66-60, in the semifinals.
Fifield has been named as Little East Conference Coach of the Year 11 times. Last year he was the Div. III National Coach of the Year, and he was inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003.
During a game, Fifield will move up and down the sideline, calling out instructions and encouragement. He’ll point, cross his arms, sneak over to the end of the bench to grab a quick drink of water and then walk back up the sideline.
“The secret to coaching, to being successful, is that you have to be who you are,” he says. “I couldn’t sit like John Wooden, with my legs crossed. I’m not Bobby Knight or Lou Carnesecca, either. You coach within your own personality.”
When asked about the success that he’s had at USM, Fifield turns the spotlight from himself and explains that basketball played at the high school level in Maine is “very good” and that, with no Div. II schools in the state, his program is a natural choice for athletes that don’t play at UMaine but want to stay local.
Nine of the 16 Huskies on this season’s roster are from Maine, and all but one are from New England. The team’s two all-conference selections – Megan Myles (Auburn) and Ashley Marble (Topsfield) – are homegrown as well.
In a stretch under Fifield in which USM has won at least 20 games each year and failed to qualify for the NCAAs just once, this may be the best season the program has had. It will be able to claim that honor definitively if the Huskies can bring the NCAA title back to Gorham.
“Certainly that’s something that every coach aspires to, and the kids are very focused on that,” Fifield says, “but a lot of other programs have that same aspiration.”
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