Jaycie Christopher, who was a role player in Division I at the University of Maine, is averaging just short of a double-double at Southern Maine. Southern Maine athletics photo

By Riley Zayas
The Scoop on D3 Women’s Hoops

For Jaycie Christopher, there was a moment when it became clear she belonged at Southern Maine. 

On a campus visit as a transfer portal prospect, the 6’0 guard was walking around with a few current players who, although she didn’t know it then, would soon become her teammates. 

They were talking about the USM program, one whose tradition featured three national title game appearances and current success coming off an 18-win season in head coach David Chadbourne’s second year. 

Then one of the players said something that stuck with Christopher.

“She said, ‘It is a privilege to play for Coach Chadbourne,’” remembers Christopher, who at the time had just wrapped up her third season playing at Division I Maine. “The way they talked about each other and their coaches really stood out to me. Knowing that everybody wants to compete, play hard, and play for each other says a lot.”

It didn’t take long for her to decide on playing her senior year for the Huskies. In his three years as head coach, Chadbourne has brought in several remarkable talents, helping take USM from a team that finished five games below .500 the year prior to his first season to one that opened its current campaign by winning 13 of its first 14 games. 

But none have generated the sort of buzz that Christopher’s commitment did when it was announced in mid-April. News station WABI out of Bangor ran a segment on it. Two of the biggest newspapers in the region — the Kennebec Journal and the Bangor Daily News — ran stories on the in-state transfer going from the University of Maine to Southern Maine. Because Christopher’s notoriety in Maine went beyond her having appeared in 82 career games for the state’s lone Division I program. 

She was also the Maine Gatorade High School Player of the Year and Miss Maine Basketball Player of the Year in 2022, the same year she led Skowhegan High School to its first state title. In a state that has produced NBA No. 1 draft pick Cooper Flagg and 2023 Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Mackenzie Holmes in the last five years, there is immense attention on its former high school stars, and Christopher was no exception. 

There are plenty of players who would’ve let the headlines go to their head. But that isn’t who Christopher is, and Chadbourne recognized that from the very beginning.

“I’ve had a bunch of transfers, and a lot of times it doesn’t work out, especially when they’re transferring down from a higher level,” Chadbourne, who previously spent 24 years leading the men’s program at D-II Franklin Pierce University, said. “A lot of those kids come in with a sense of entitlement, and there’s some ego involved. Neither one of these kids [Christopher and transfer Avah Ingalls, D-II Assumpton] have any ego whatsoever. It just made the transition so smooth.”

In her debut against the University of New England, Christopher connected on USM’s first shot of the season, swishing a 3-pointer from the top of the arc. She went on to score 18 points on that early November evening, staying on the floor for all but two minutes of the 76-58 win. 

“Going into that game, there were some nerves,” remembers Christopher, who made her first collegiate start that night. “I don’t normally get super nervous for games, but you never know. I’m thankful for the teammates I have around me, and as soon as we were on the court and the ball was tipped, we were good to go.” 

She followed that up by scoring 15 points in 17 minutes of a blowout defeat of Maine Presque-Isle, and then led the charge for 39 minutes in a nine-point win at Emmanuel four days later. 

The biggest test for USM was still to come. Two days before Thanksgiving, with the spotlight on Elsa Daulerio’s chase for the career 1,000-point mark, USM nearly upset Bates on the road. The Huskies pushed the game into overtime with a game-tying 3 from Dakota Shipley before falling by four. It was another 18-point game for Christopher, who this time played 43 minutes and dished out four assists. 

If those first four games were any indication, USM found itself an All-American when Christopher made the decision to join the Huskies in the spring. Through 13 games, she is averaging 19.3 points, 9.1 rebounds, and 3.1 assists, leading the Little East Conference in each of the first two categories. In what has so far been a brief Division III career, she has already earned a selection to the D3hoops.com Team of the Week, and twice been named Little East Conference Player of the Week. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever had somebody where I could literally play her or him 1 through 5,” Chadbourne said. “Jaycie can literally play every position for us…and has, to be honest.”

That’s coming from the perspective of three decades of pacing the sidelines as a head coach, mostly leading winning teams. Chadbourne got his start in women’s basketball at Franklin Pierce in 1996, twice leading the Ravens to NE-10 titles in three years at the helm. He then flipped to the men’s side at FPU where similar success followed him, becoming the program’s all-time wins leader with 344 in 24 seasons. Eighteen of those seasons featured a postseason appearance. 

It was three years ago when he made the decision to come back to women’s basketball. A Maine native who played baseball and basketball at St. Joseph’s (Maine) when the now current D3 school was part of the NAIA, there was a draw to return to his home state when the USM job opened up. But he wasn’t going to leave FPU — a place he’d posted winning campaigns in 11 of the previous 12 seasons — for just any job. He wanted a place that could win, and a place that attracted players fixated on the same goal. USM certainly checked that box. 

“I wouldn’t have taken it if I didn’t think you could win there,” Chadbourne said. “You can win at Southern Maine. It’s a great place with great support and people that care. 

“I have the banner in my office with all the NCAA [tournament appearances], and all the league championships. Impressive is not the right word. It’s unbelievable. We’re fortunate, Coach [Gary] Fifield, who was the architect of all that, still comes in all the time and we chat. He’s always part of it. The tradition they had was great, and we’re trying to get near there again.” 

As a state, Maine has always held basketball in high regard. At the college level, much of its national success has come through its Division III women’s hoops powerhouses, starting with the Fifield-coached Southern Maine teams of the late ‘90s and early 2000s. The Huskies went to three national title games in 1998, 2001, and 2006 under Fifield, whose teams had at least 20 wins in 26 of his 27 seasons. 

By the end of that run, Bowdoin had risen to immense prominence out of the NESCAC, with a national title game appearance in 2004. In 2010, Colby reached its first NESCAC championship game, and won an NCAA Tournament first round game afterwards. In recent years, Bates made its return to the NCAA Tournament after well over a decade of absence, and just last season, Bates and Bowdoin each won a first-round tournament game. 

Division III women’s basketball in Maine only seems to keep getting better. Look no further than Monday’s latest D3hoops.com Top 25 poll, which has Bowdoin at No. 8, Bates at No. 14, and Southern Maine receiving votes. All three are well on track for tournament berths, and that’s not even including Maine-Maritime, the current frontrunner in the NAC. 

Christopher, like many of her teammates who also grew up in the state, considers herself fortunate to be right in the midst of the state’s D3 hoops tradition. Whether you walk into Bowdoin’s Morrell Gymnasium, Bates’ Alumni Gym, or USM’s very own Warren G. Hill Gymnasium, you’ll find special environments that represent communities bought-in to the program’s success. 

“There’s a lot of kids in Maine on the girls’ basketball side that are choosing to stay and play in Maine, which is huge,” Christopher said. “I think the culture we have around women’s basketball has improved so much, and that goes up to UMaine at the Division I level. They have a great program that represents the women there very well. That has filtered into all the Division III programs, obviously. It’s been really cool to be a part of and see different communities in Maine rally around their women’s team.”

That is present in Gorham, a town of about 18,000 a few miles outside of Portland. It was also present in Christopher’s hometown of Skowhegan, the kind of place where the high school team’s success would very nearly shut down the town of 8,000 on a big gameday. Skowhegan was where her basketball dreams were born, going back to the day she found out — as a fourth-grader — that Skowhegan High School had never won state. 

“I grew up watching my high school play, and I remember finding out they had never won a state championship,” Christopher recalls. “That was around the time I had really started to love basketball. So that became a goal of mine.”

By the time she reached her senior year, that long-term goal had real possibility. The group she had grown up with were now all juniors and seniors, and they began a march towards the Class A North Championship in Portland. The River Hawks went through the regular season 18-0, then added three more double-digit victories for a trip to the title game against Greenly. Already Skowhegan’s all-time leading scorer, Christopher put up 24 points in an eventual 60-46 win, finally realizing the dream she’d had since her earliest days of dribbling the ball. 

“Being able to win a state championship, especially my senior year, with the kids I grew up with, and to do it for our community…that’s a feeling that’s hard to beat,” Christopher added. “You grow up having that dream, so to be able to reach that goal and work so hard to get there was very rewarding.”

Less than four months after she cut down the nets in Portland, Christopher found herself back in another state championship setting, this time on the softball diamond. She was already the Miss Maine Basketball Player of the Year, but as she led Skowhegan’s softball team to a Class A Final Four appearance that summer — one year after taking the team to a state title as a junior — Christopher made even more history. She was named Miss Maine Softball Player of the Year, becoming the first athlete to ever win both prestigious honors, and did it alongside many of the same teammates she’d won a basketball state title with months earlier. 

“I always thought I was going to play basketball in college, but I had a lot of fun with softball,” Christopher said when asked if she ever considered a college career in softball. “It allowed me to work on other parts of my athleticism. Playing multiple sports is huge in that way, and with softball being a huge hand-eye coordination sport, it helped expand my athleticism. We had a good group and that also made it fun.” 

Those memories forever instilled a bond with the community she grew up in. Over the years, she’s had the chance to go back and help lead different camps in Skowhegan while working towards her future goal of pursuing coaching. The valedictorian of her senior class, she will graduate from USM as an organizational leadership major, which goes hand-in-hand with her path to coaching. 

“I’m really passionate about giving back to my community,” Christopher noted.  “I’ve had the opportunity to coach and run different camps in my hometown, and coaching is definitely where I want to go with my next steps. Right now, I’m taking a bunch of leadership classes, which has been really cool. Being able to help people, and hopefully help a few kids find their love for the game, is what’s really driving me as I look forward.” 

She found a great coaching role model in Chadbourne when she committed to USM. Having heard how highly her teammates spoke of their head coach in Christopher’s visit to campus, she has now seen up close what they were talking about. He consistently gets the most out of his teams — his 30-year track record is evidence of that — and right now has a team believing it has plenty more to accomplish leading into March. 

“Even if the opponent doubles [Jaycie], we’ve got four other people who can make shots,” Chadbourne said before USM’s 57-48 win over Rhode Island College on Jan. 6. “We can all handle, shoot, and pass. We’re 10-1, and I don’t think we’ve played nearly as well as we’re capable of playing. We still have a lot of room for growth. And will grow.” 

Along with Christopher, sophomore Lucy Wiles averages 15.2 points per game, shooting 41.7% from beyond the 3-point arc. Ingalls, the point guard who joined the program from Assumption University, is running the floor with 3.2 assists per game. Sophomore forward Dakota Shipley has blocked 17 shots in addition to her 12.3 points and 7.2 rebounds per contest. 

Christopher is garnering the headlines — and rightfully so — but USM isn’t a one-player show. Not anywhere close. 

“You don’t want to run everything for Jaycie, because we have very talented kids alongside her and I don't want those kids just deferring,” Chadbourne said. “Lucy needs to be Lucy. Dakota needs to be Dakota, and so on. The great thing about it is, Jaycie will just blend her game in so they can flourish as well.”

14 games in, USM is proving that. Christopher has scored in double figures in 13 of those contests, but the high-scoring stat lines haven't been forced. This is a team that takes smart shots, has assisted on 56% of its makes, and utilizes its wide array of scoring threats on the offensive end. In Wednesday’s 81-54 win over defending LEC champ Mass-Dartmouth, Christopher, Wiles, Ingalls, and Liz Cote each finished with 13-plus points, while Christopher, Wiles, and Ingalls dished out at least three assists apiece as well. 

The same is true defensively, where USM ranks No. 1 in the LEC in scoring defense and has the 37th-best defensive efficiency in the country. 

“We know what we need to do every day, every game, every practice when we show up,” Christopher said. “We just want to make each other better. We obviously want to play as much basketball as we can this year, in the Little East Conference and hopefully beyond.”

Last spring, Christopher made the decision to leave the program, campus, and city she’d known for three years to move to USM prior to her senior season. It was a significant shift, with a new coaching staff, teammates, and community to mesh with. But she’s thankful that the opportunity came her way, and in the midst of USM’s chase for its first LEC title since 2013, is embracing each step of this season’s journey. 

“My big focus coming into this season was finding joy for the game again,” Christopher added. “I think a lot of times when players get to college they lose sight of why we play. At the end of the day, we started to love the game because it was fun. 

“I’m super competitive, and I’m thankful to be on a team that has like-minded people. That’s definitely been the best part: being able to compete together and enjoy it.”