Coody didn’t take long to earn his first professional win.
Three starts into his professional career and Pierceson Coody is already a winner.
Just a month after helping lead Texas to the team title at the NCAA Championship, Coody ran away to win the Korn Ferry Tour’s 2022 Live and Work in Maine Open at 20 under, five shots clear of runner-up Jacob Bergeron. The former Longhorn shot a 5-under 66 in the final round at Falmouth Country Club for his fourth round in the 60s of the week (69-62-67).
Nelson Ledesma, Will Gordon, Fabian Gomez and amateur Cole Anderson finished T-3 at 14 under. Zach Sucher shot the low round of the day, a 7-under 64, to climb into seventh at 12 under.
Coody finished in the top five of the final 2022 PGA Tour University standings to receive Korn Ferry Tour membership for the rest of this season, starting with the BMW Charity Pro-Am earlier this month. The Plano, Texas, native missed the cut at the BMW, then finished T-4 last week at the 2022 Wichita Open.
A look inside Kentucky offensive coordinator Liam Coen’s background and moving up the coaching ranks from Maine.
Tennessee (4-4, 2-3 SEC) will play at Kentucky (6-2, 4-2 SEC) Saturday in Week 10.
Kickoff is slated for 7 p.m. EDT and will be televised by ESPN2.
Liam Coen is in his first season as Kentucky’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
Coen was hired at Kentucky following a three-year stint as the Los Angeles Rams’ assistant wide receivers (2018-19) and assistant quarterbacks (2020) coach in the NFL.
Coen served as Maine’s offensive coordinator from 2016-17 before his time in the NFL.
At Maine, the Black Bears ran an offensive system that comes from the coaching tree of Ohio State head coach Ryan Day. Those principles and concepts are still used in Coen’s offense in the Southeastern Conference.
Nick Charlton is in his third season as Maine’s head coach. He coached alongside Coen from 2016-17, serving as the Black Bears’ wide receivers and special teams coach.
Charlton coached alongside Day from 2013-14 as a graduate assistant at Boston College. The current Ohio State head coach was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach alongside Charlton.
Day’s program operation, offensive scheme and concepts are seen in Maine’s program, as well as at Kentucky in 2021.
Ohio State head coach Ryan Day. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
Ryan Day’s operation, offensive concepts
Day stresses organization throughout his offensive scheme, while building a team identity through player-personnel each year.
Going into spring practices, Day starts from scratch with his offense based on adapting to his roster.
At this time, he identifies who the best players are and utilizes them. This process is also referred to as his Bucket organization. During the offseason, he wants his player-personnel to go through base plays at minimum 100 times in preparation for the season.
His offense features a tight zone where the running back is ready to follow the center going downhill. In a tight zone, there can be up to six different variations. Raider is reading the backside defensive end. Cowboy is blocking the C-gap with a tight end. Buccaneer takes place by reading a defensive end when the tight end blocks a B-gap overhang.
Midzone is where the running back aims for the inside of the guard, providing a wide play. Day’s offense features up to six variations of midzone blocking. This is typically executed based on matchups with the opponent each week.
Outside zone is also schemed to get the ball on the field-side.
All three zones have different landmarks, but with the same identifications.
In gap zone, Day stresses a power scheme in which a guard pulls and blocks downhill. A counter scheme is also present in a gap zone.
Day’s base offense also showcases a perimeter running game with plays such as a speed sweep.
Short plays are a base concept in Day’s offense, allowing for the quarterback to get the ball out his hands in the quick game. Day stresses for an 80 percent completion percentage in the short game. Slants and hitches are executed a lot. Short plays are also consistent of the quarterback being able to get out of the pocket with naked or bootleg ability. RPO and screen plays fall under short plays, as well.
Mediums are routes that showcase five-step, high-low execution, such as outside triangles attacking the flat and a cornerback. Mirror routes provide one-on-one matchups on the outside with out-routes, comebacks and go-routes.
Crossers are used a lot when Ohio State plays a man coverage defense. Mesh plays are also seen occasionally throughout Day’s offense.
Isolation plays are when the X-receiver and the H-back are trying to become open or are in one-on-one matchups to have the ball in their hands. Floods and four verticals are used a lot, too.
Down-the-field passing attempts are also featured, and a priority in Day’s offense. Day’s importance of having a strong, physical running game can allow for the opposition to have a run fit close within the box and he will then attack downfield in the passing game.
As Charlton took over for Coen as offensive coordinator in 2018 and as head coach from 2019-21, the offensive scheme and concepts have remained the same.
Pat Denecke is in his sixth season on Maine’s coaching staff. He served as Maine’s tight ends coach when Coen was coordinating the Black Bears’ offense, while Charlton oversaw wide receivers. Charlton has since elevated Denecke to assistant head coach, run game coordinator and offensive line coach.
“I don’t think any of us were surprised to see him take a big step when he left Maine,” Denecke said of Coen on the show “Football Two-A-Days.” “Very intelligent coach, very enthusiastic coach, really enjoyed being around him for the two seasons we were together.
“The base of the offense is still the same. It is still within the same system, obviously it evolves year to year based on your personnel, but a lot of the terminology has stayed the same. A lot of the scheme has stayed the same. Formationally and personnel-wise we have grown a little, but more motion and things of that nature, but I would say the nuts and bolts of our offense are pretty much still intact from when Liam was here.”
Maine Offensive coordinator Liam Coen passes to players before an NCAA college football game at Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field against Maine, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016, in East Hartford, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
Denecke further discussed Charlton and Maine studying Day and Ohio State to continue to evolve offensively.
“We spend a lot of time studying what they are doing on offense, as well as the Rams when Coach Coen was there,” Denecke said. “Because there are some familiarity, you can usually figure out what they are trying to do knowing the system and you can definitely see where Nick cut his teeth as a coach learning under Coach Day. Very similar in terms of trying to be creative, but still finding different ways to execute the same things by week and finding different ways to attack the weaknesses of the defense based on the strengths of the offense.
“We had a few mesh concepts, but I wouldn’t say anything derived from the Air Raid system.The majority of our offense derives from a West Coast or prostyle and has kind of evolved into 11 and 12-personnel, we’re under center a good bit, but I wouldn’t call us a true prostyle. We’re not using a fullback or anything like that. We call ourselves a hybrid. We’re not quite spread, we’re not quite pro, but we have some prostyle systems within a spread offense.”
Max Staver played quarterback at Maine under Coen and for Charlton and Denecke.
Staver also discussed his time with Coen at Maine before leaving for the NFL.
“He really knew what he was doing,” Staver said of Coen on “Football Two-A-Days.” “His offense was really diverse and what we were trying to accomplish, the threat of the run, the vertical pass game, mixed with some spread concepts, the usage of tempo. He definitely knew what he was doing. I think everybody had the understanding that Coach Coen would eventually move on from Maine.”
The entire shows with Denecke and Staver can be listened to below. Charlton also joined the show “Football Two-A-Days” in 2020 and discussed Maine football and his time with Day and Coen.
A Maine angler “with a couple of hours to kill” caught a lake trout that’s likely to shatter a state record that has stood for 62 years.
A Maine angler “with a couple of hours to kill” last Thursday caught a lake trout that’s likely to shatter the 62-year-old state record.
The lake trout caught by Erik Poland at Lower Richardson Lake weighed 39.2 pounds. The state record is a 31.5-pound lake trout caught by Hollis Grindle at Beech Hill Pond in 1958.
Poland told For The Win Outdoors that he has provided catch details and a document signed by the Maine Warden Service to The Maine Sportsman, which maintains fishing records, and expects his record to be approved soon.
“I don’t see any obstacles in that process,” he said.
Poland, 34, of Andover, told the Bangor Daily News that he went fishing mainly to pass time. “I had a couple of hours to kill [so] I thought I’d fish for salmon for awhile, go for a swim, then head home.”
When he failed to locate salmon on his sonar device, Poland dropped a DB Smelt lure 94 feet to the bottom, where he saw markings that indicated the presence of lake trout.
His first strike was by what is now the pending state-record fish, which he fought for more than an hour before realizing his net was too small.
“I walked it up to the back of the boat, looked at my 18- to 20-inch net and quickly kicked that to the side,” he told the Bangor Daily News. “It was half the size it needed to be. So I just grabbed [the fish] by the gill plate and hauled it up over the stern of the boat.”
Poland used lead-core line and a two-inch lure tied to a fluorocarbon leader with a breaking strength of only eight pounds, making the catch even more remarkable. “I can’t even dare to guess how many times it ran line out on me, and then I’d reel it back in,” he said.
He described the catch as bittersweet because going for a record meant killing the fish.
“There was a fleeting moment where I really wanted to put it back,” he said. “But ultimately, I would have been the biggest liar in the world if I had. Then it really would have just been a fish tale.”
Lake trout are found throughout most of Canada, into Alaska, and in parts of the U.S., where they were introduced. In the southern regions the fish tend to remain in cooler water at extreme depths.
The International Game Fish Assn. list as the all-tackle world record a 72-pound lake trout caught in Great Bear Lake in Canada’s Northern Territories in 1995.
Neil Leifer’s famous photograph of Muhammad Ali standing over a fallen Sonny Liston in their rematch was taken on this date 55 years ago.
The arguments over the greatest fighters and fights go on and on. Strong cases can almost always be made for a number of candidates. And passionate boxing fans don’t hesitate to make them.
One thing that generally isn’t debated? The most iconic photo in the history of the sport.
That distinction goes to Sports Illustrated photographer Neil Leifer’s image of a young Muhammad Ali standing over a beaten Sonny Liston in their rematch on this date — May 25 — in 1965 at the Central Maine Youth Center in Lewiston, Maine.
Liston, who had lost the heavyweight title to Ali 15 months earlier, went down from the mysterious “phantom punch,” a hard-to-see right to the jaw only 1 minute, 42 seconds into the fight that spawned the unproven notion that Liston took a dive.
Ali, only 23 at the time, looked down at Liston and yelled, “Get up and fight, sucker!”
Leifer snapped his shot at that moment in what might be described as a perfect photographic storm: great photographer in the exact right place at the exact right time. The result is arguably the greatest sports photo ever.
Liston did get up amid confusion over the count, which referee and former champ Jersey Joe Walcott had bungled. However, after the timekeeper and The Ring Magazine Editor Nat Fleischer waved their arms to signal that the count had reached 10, Walcott declared Ali the winner.
The fight lasted all of 2 minutes, 12 seconds, but it was enough time to produce one of Ali’s most important victories, conspiracy theories that persist to this day and an image that is seared in our minds.
Is sports betting legal in Maine? We look at the latest information.
No, sports betting in Maine is not legal at this time.
Sports betting in Maine
During the 2019 legislative session lawmakers in The Pine Tree State introduced several bills in an attempt to legalize sports gambling. However, only one bill survived and made it to the desk of Democrat Governor Janet Mills. She ended up killing the bill via veto, effectively ending Mainers hopes of sports betting anytime soon.
Online sportsbooks in Maine
None. Maine has no legal sportsbooks inside its borders, and it appears it will not be happening in the immediate future.
Retail sportsbooks in Maine
None. There are no casinos or sportsbooks in Maine, and the future doesn’t look terribly bright if you’re hoping to bet within this state. However, a quick trip to New Hampshire is where Maine residents can bet legally.
A Maine angler discovered Sunday that fighting a 27-pound muskie is not nearly as challenging as getting the fish through the ice.
A Maine fishermen discovered Saturday that fighting a 27-pound muskie is not nearly as challenging as landing such a hefty fish through an 8-inch hole in the ice.
The accompanying footage shows Wade Kelly, a participant in the Long Lake Ice Fishing Derby at Glazier Lake, plunging his entire left arm into the frigid water in an attempt to carefully lift his catch through the narrow opening.
The muskie was so big that its head needed to be positioned perfectly to fit through the hole, and so heavy that the line might have broken had Kelly attempted to reel the fish onto the ice.
“His head was crossways to the hole [and it wouldn’t fit through],” Kelly told the Bangor Daily News. “That’s why my hand went down in the hole.”
Kelly, a guide with Tylor Kelly Camps, knew that muskies possess incredibly sharp teeth. So on his third attempt he successfully gripped the fish by its gill plate and performed a perfect extraction, to the great surprise of his wife.
Wade Kelly poses with his prize-winning muskie. Photo: Steve St. Jarre
“Oh my gosh, Wade, that is a monster!” Sue Underhill Kelly says in the footage.
She later told For the Win Outdoors: “He knew it was big but didn’t say anything to me, so I was astonished to see a muskie of that size come up in his hand.”
The 47-inch muskie weighed 26 pounds, 9 ounces, and earned Kelly first place in the muskie category of the two-day derby. Kelly’s fish beat the second-place muskie by nearly three pounds.
–Images showing Wade Kelly with his muskie are courtesy of Sue Underhill Kelly (top) and Steve St. Jarre
