Newcomers abound, but McDormand is optimistic for his first season at Tech

Tonight, when the Lynn Tech girls basketball team travels to Haverhill for its season opener against fellow Commonwealth Athletic Conference member Whittier Tech, the Tigers will present a roster significantly different from the 2007-08 edition.A pair of 1,000 career-point scorers from last season, Shena Mitchell and Jessica Underwood, both graduated this past spring. (Underwood is now playing for Roxbury Community College.) John Crowley, the coach who guided the Tigers to a 16-4 mark a year ago, has stepped down. His replacement, Kevin McDormand, is candid but positive in his outlook.”I think only two of our players played full-time on the varsity last year,” said McDormand, a Lynn native who is in his first season as a head coach. “All the rest are totally new. They swung between the JV and the varsity.”That’s not to say this season has no hope. I expect we’ll peak far later in the year. We’re going to get there.”McDormand has faced obstacles from the outset. There are no seniors on the team, two players were ruled ineligible, and numbers remain low (he listed just 11 players on the squad). Nevertheless, he sounds upbeat.”We’re not doing too bad this year,” he said. “Tech traditionally has even lower numbers. Last year, for a couple of games, we might have had seven or eight players.”We have a full JV team, which is not something taken for granted at Tech. We’re just trying to keep interest up. I never want to give the impression I don’t take practice seriously.” He added, “We have a lot of new players showing up.”Three juniors will serve as captains: Fanice Jean-Baptiste, Maya Sewell and Olivia Harper. McDormand said he hopes Jean-Baptiste will be his offensive point guard. He also praised Sewell’s work on defense and Harper’s attitude and leadership skills. The coach added that he thinks another player, sophomore Jenna Kulakowski, “will really flourish under me.”Rounding out the team are juniors Shanel Bird – who previously starred in soccer – and Jenaya Dube, sophomore Ceselia Muise, Maybelin Salmeron, and freshmen Claribelle Ramirez, Jackie Ruiz, and Ashley Ramirez.”We’re like a Don Nelson team,” McDormand said. “We’ll have one big player out there and probably four guards.”The comparison with Nelson, an NBA coach whose current team is the Golden State Warriors, is apt in another sense: Both Nelson and McDormand come from basketball families. Nelson’s son Donnie heads up the Dallas Mavericks’ front office, while McDormand’s father, Brian, is a former Lynnfield girls coach.”Basketball has always been a big part of my life,” Kevin McDormand said. “I grew up watching a lot of coaches.”Through his father, McDormand met numerous past and present coaches in Lynn, such as English girls coach Fred Hogan, former Classical girls coach Gene Constantino, current Tech boys coach Marvin Avery (whom he has worked with) and current Tech principal Jim Ridley.”Lynn basketball was always a part of my life as a kid,” McDormand said. “I got to see some basketball in Chicago and New York, but I think Lynn is a great, great basketball scene. Watching (current Classical boys coach Tom Grassa’s) title team as a kid, and some tough English teams ? I think it’s a great city for basketball.”McDormand said he is “enthralled” with his three assistants, all of whom share the first name Robert: Robert Upton, Robert Smith, and Robert Johnson. In high school, Upton played for English alongside former Bulldogs star Anthony Anderson, who went on to play at UMass-Amherst.The Tigers played no scrimmages this season – “I guess because of the newness of the program and the amount we had to teach,” McDormand said – but got to face another team in Marblehead during the Paul Duchane preseason jamboree on Dec. 6. While Marblehead won, McDormand called the result “not something to discourage us.”Indeed, he is encouraged by the effort he has seen from his team thus far.”It’s been two weeks, but they’ve been a pleasure to coach at practice,” McDormand said. “I’m exci