Wade Morrill is a little nervous about his new job. Probably a little more nervous than he needs to be. He said as much to Dwight Littlefield, the athletic director at Bingham's Valley High School who hired Morrill to be the school's boys basketball coach.

Morrill, 27, is the first new varsity boys basketball coach the school has hired in more than three decades. Littlefield took over the program in 1977. Thirty-one years later, he had 471 wins, six state championships, 10 Western Maine championships and a 101-game win streak, one of the longest in schoolboy basketball history.

Big shoes to fill? These are giant clown shoes to fill. The kind you don't even try to fill. These shoes should be bronzed and set gently in the Valley High School trophy case.

Morrill is Littlefield's successor, not his replacement. If we never gave a chance to the inexperienced, then nobody would ever get any experience.

Littlefield's advice was to the point and no nonsense, just like Morrill expected.

"He said, 'Well, you have to start sometime,' " Morrill said. "He started when he was 28."

Morrill comes to the Valley job with a resume similar to that of Littlefield when he became Valley's coach prior to the 1977-78 season. A few years as a junior varsity coach, a few years teaching.

Valley fans expect effort and hard work. That Morrill can provide. That's all he's known, and he'll pass that on to the next generation of Cavaliers.

Morrill compared himself to Karen Sirois, the new girls basketball coach at Cony High School, and it's a fair comparison. Sirois played for the coaching giant, Paul Vachon, who was her immediate predecessor. Vachon retired with 433 wins and seven state titles.

Both Littlefield and Vachon are in the New England Basketball Hall of Fame. Like Morrill, Sirois won state titles while playing for her Hall of Fame coach.

If Morrill takes the same approach Sirois has, he'll do fine.

"You're trying to compare someone who's been there for 23 years to someone starting their first year," Sirois said when hired at Cony. "I'm going in with my style and what I do best."

Morrill already said he plans to keep the Cavs playing the uptempo style that worked for so many years under Littlefield. He may mix up the defensive schemes.

Whatever Morrill does, he has a strong group of role models to draw from. Along with Littlefield, there's Steve Hamilton, the former head coach at Jay and Winthrop. Morrill was an assistant on Hamilton's staff when Jay won the Class C state title in 2002. Morrill has picked the brain of Dick Meader, the University of Maine at Farmington's head coach.

There hasn't been a Western Maine Class D tournament without Valley since 1983, and that streak doesn't appear in jeopardy, no matter who coaches the Cavaliers.

"I love basketball and I love Valley," Morrill said.

Sounds like Morrill has nothing to be nervous about at all.

Travis Lazarczyk -- 861-9242

tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com