LEBANON — As the COVID-19 pandemic takes away, so does it also give.
K.J. Matte, the Lebanon High boys basketball program’s last 1,000-point scorer, should be in Maine right now, completing his senior season at Bowdoin College. That he isn’t is the pandemic’s fault: He’s been remote learning since last spring, on schedule to get his government degree, finding out he’d get no final games with the Polar Bears when NESCAC canceled the winter schedule in October.
Not long after, opportunity knocked. Coronavirus concerns would keep much of his father Kieth Matte’s Lebanon coaching staff sidelined this winter. He found help within his own house; now K.J. is wandering the same sideline as a Lebanon junior varsity basketball coach.
“I was really ready to have a breakout season, but I understand there can’t be a season, for obvious reasons,” the younger Matte said prior to a Raider practice last week. “It is unfortunate, but I’m coping with it. I’m really glad to be here with this team. It’s a blessing just to be in the gym, let alone be able to actually have games, being able to coach games and practice.”
Kieth Matte has always had a wealth of experience on his bench, but the pandemic left him scrambling.
Two of his longtime aides, assistant coach Paul Karp and scorekeeper Dave Chapin, both chose to take the winter off. Connor Rockwell, last year’s JV coach and a Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center administrator, also had to step back because of his job. With Matte’s son at home from school and looking for a basketball outlet, offering him the chance to try coaching checked all the boxes.
“We needed an interim coach; we needed someone who knew the system and could do the drills, could hit the ground running,” Kieth said. “K.J. was available. It just made so much sense. We kind of just clicked into that mode.”
K.J. has largely played a support role at Bowdoin, netting 141 minutes of playing time in 36 career games. His senior year was going to be different, he said, with the likelihood of more game time. It never happened; Bowdoin completed its 2019-20 schedule before the pandemic truly hit, and Matte didn’t suit up for the school again after a pair of four-minute cameos against Amherst and Hamilton in early February.
“I still really love my team at Bowdoin,” he said. “If there was a season, I would be headed back, of course.”
Instead, he’s been able to grow coaching skills that have taken root.
Matte has done skill development work before with two former Lebanon teammates, Braeden Estes and Austin Whaley, through the Lebanon Longhorns AAU program. He’s been able to adjust to basketball strategizing by falling back on his experiences as a Raider.
“I like to think I have an aggressive style of coaching and playing,” he said. “That urgency to push the ball, push the tempo, sprint back, play aggressive man-to-man defense, all those same principles, I can see those bleeding over into my coaching. … That was something we liked to do when I was in high school.”
He and Lebanon’s other new JV coach, Jason Weischedel, present a contrast once the game starts. Matte is on his feet the entire time, studying, directing; Weischedel — a new LHS math teacher who played basketball at Minnesota’s Carleton College a decade ago — stays seated throughout, clutching a clipboard. (Jacklyn Angell returned as freshman coach.)
K.J. already gives the impression of someone who knows what he’s doing. Locked in a tight contest with Mascoma on Friday night, Matte calmly reminded his players to rest at the break and get ready to wear out the Royals with second-half pressure.
“I wasn’t a good basketball player, so I coach from more of an angle of someone who never played,” Kieth Matte said. “He totally relates to the kids as players. His mom (Chris) was a very good basketball player. He’s demanding. He makes them do it the right way. He’s patient, more than I am, maybe.”
K.J. Matte doesn’t think he’s done playing.
With government degree in hand and spurred by an interest in the history and politics of the Middle East, Matte expects to enroll this fall in Norwich University’s 18-month diplomacy master’s program. Auditing an Arabic class at Dartmouth years ago planted the seed, he said; he spent five weeks visiting Jordan in 2019 and would entertain the chance to play basketball while absorbing a foreign culture. He hopes to hit the floor for the Cadets with his holdover year of eligibility from this pandemic-altered season.
But K.J. Matte has some coaching to do first.
“Being able to be on the court and play basketball against good competition, that’s been a very nice luxury that I know a lot of Division III college players, they’re not getting this,” Matte said. “It’s a blessing.”
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.