Morning Sentinel
BOYS SOCCER: Harrington named KJ Boys Soccer Player of the Year
By GARY HAWKINS Staff writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 12/01/2008

By Gary Hawkins
Staff Writer

Richmond senior Andy Harrington hasn’t fully recovered from the last soccer game of his high school career.
Eastern Maine champion Katahdin ruined Richmond’s bid for a perfect season and a second straight Class D state championship with a 5-4 win in the state title game.
“I look back now and I could have done better,” Harrington said.
Although the 5-foot-7, 165-pound striker holds himself to a high standard, it’s tough to see how. He figured in all four Richmond goals that day, scoring three and assisting on the other. For the season, he scored 26 goals and recorded 18 assists to help the Bobcats to a 16-1-0 record.
For his efforts, Harrington has been named the Kennebec Journal Boys Soccer Player of the Year. Richmond senior Jason Brown and Maranacook junior David Clough were also considered.
With an older brother and sister who played for the Bobcats in the mid-1990s, Harrington is well aware of the soccer tradition in Richmond.
“You’d take the plumbing away in Richmond before you’d give up soccer,” he said. “It’s just so big. It brings families together and friends.”
As his statistics suggest, Harrington passes as well as he shoots. Richmond coach Joe Scribellito attributes this to Harrington’s hockey background where assists are considered as meaningful as goals. He currently plays for the Maine Moose of the International Junior Hockey League and has played the game most of his life.
“It’s fun,” Harrington said. “I love dancing with the ball and throwing out a nice pass.”
During the soccer season, Harrington attended hockey practices each morning at the Kennebec Ice Arena in Hallowell before school. In the evening, he jogs a family race horse. During the summer, Harrington heads to New Hampshire where his mother and stepfather own a number of harness racing horses and race them at Rockingham Park.
“I’ll always own a horse and train it,” Harrington said. “I love to sit behind a horse.”
Harrington competed in his first harness race last summer at the Skowhegan Fair and finished second.
“It’s competitive,” Harrington said. “Your thinking and hand-eye coordination has to be so good.”
Driving is an avocation he’s considering both short and long-term. He knows the history behind the success of Jason Bartlett, the Erskine Academy graduate who played a couple of years of college basketball and is currently the top driver at Yonkers Raceway.
“If I go to college, that’s what I’ll do when I get out,” Harrington said.
He’s weighing offers and options in both soccer and hockey. He’s talked with a couple of prep school coaches here in Maine about playing soccer while hockey options vary from playing juniors out West to colleges in New York and Massachusetts. Size, or lack of it, could prove an obstacle, particularly in hockey, but Scribellito doesn’t see it that way.
“It’s not the size of the player, it’s the size of the heart,” the Richmond coach said. “And Andy’s got a huge heart.”

Gary Hawkins — 621-5638
ghawkins@centralmaine.com

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