THORNDIKE — In 1987, Greg Reid led the Mount View boys basketball team — a group of scrappy, hardworking country kids — to the Class B championship.

On Saturday, 37 years after the program won its lone Gold Ball, Reid will drive the Mount View boys basketball team — a group of scrappy, hardworking country kids — to the Class C title game in Augusta.

For 35 years, Reid, who turns 79 in July, has driven a bus for RSU 3, which is comprised of 11 Waldo County towns: Brooks, Freedom, Jackson, Knox, Liberty, Monroe, Montville, Thorndike, Troy, Unity and Waldo. He’s voluntarily driven the team to its road games all season. He’ll get another opportunity to drive the Mustangs this weekend, and this time it will be to a Gold Ball game.

Mount View (16-6) will play Monmouth Academy (18-3) in the Class C final at 7:45 p.m. Saturday at the Augusta Civic Center.

“(The 2023-24 season has) been great,” Reid said. “It’s been a lot of fun and I really enjoy it. I’m really happy for the kids, the coaches, the school, the community. It’s been a long time. For several years, I’ve been saying, ‘The Gold Ball in that trophy case has been lonely. When are we going to get another one?'”

“We’ve had Greg on the bench, we’ve had Greg on the bus, we’ve had Greg on the court,” Mount View head coach Brandon Hurd added. “He’s an inspiration to us. He’s the one guy (at Mount View) as a head coach that’s been there and done that. We’re always trying to pick his brain, always trying to involve him as much as we can. I know on the other side, he very much appreciates it. I think he’s kind of reliving the ’87 dream again. I just think it’s great for everyone.”

The current group of Mustangs also appreciate having Reid around.

“It’s been really cool, I’ve known him my whole life,” senior guard Wyatt Evensen said. “For the (last) four years, we’ve had him as a bus driver multiple times. He just loves being a part of it. Even though he’s a bus driver, he just loves going to the games. He says good luck to us before every game.”

“He’s the hype man for us,” senior guard Noah Hurd added. “He’ll be on the bus and he’s all fired up.”

The Mustangs have been one of the most intriguing stories in Class C this season. Despite going 12-6 in the regular season, Mount View was almost on the outside looking in for a Class C North playoff spot. The team also struggled down the stretch, losing three of its final four regular season games. But a 60-52 victory against eventual Class C South top seed Mt. Abram — a game in which Noah Hurd notched his 1,000th career point — vaulted the Mustangs into the No. 7 seed for the playoffs.

The Mustangs dominated their competition in the C North tournament, winning games by an average of 28 points. The Mustangs crushed No. 1 seed Calais 72-38 in the C North final on Saturday at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.

Noah Hurd, also a baseball and soccer standout at Mount View, averaged 19.2 points a game during the regular season. He led the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference with an average of 4.1 steals per game. Evensen averages 3.1 steals per game and has been a strong option with Hurd.

“These kids work hard, they had to work hard to get to where they are today,” Reid said.

Reid added he sees a lot of similarities between the current Mustangs and the 1986-87 squad.

“Back when I first started, the first thing I told them was, ‘if you can’t beat your man up and down the floor, you can’t win the ballgames. You’ve got to be in better shape,'” said Reid, who coached the Mustangs for four seasons. “I remember we were in the weight room for one of the first nights of practice. After practice, I told them they could shower up, tidy up the weight room a little bit. I’m closing up the door and locking it. I could hear people running. I turn around, and about 10 of those boys were out there running (laps). This is after practice, after lifting weights. And we probably already did about six (laps) during practice. But this is what those kids did, and they wanted it bad enough, they worked extra hard.”

This Feb. 24, 1987 edition of the Morning Sentinel has a story previewing the Class B boys basketball title game between Mount View and Gorham.

Reid made sure the players stayed in shape in the offseason, which was harder to do in the 1980s. Today, Maine high school basketball players can easily find a summer camp to keep in shape, usually one run by their own high school.

“With that ’87 team, I had a farm and a hay business,” Reid said. “Half of those kids worked on the farm with me for the summer. They threw hay, a couple of them worked in the barns for me. They helped me out a lot and they worked hard.”

The Mustangs had some talented players as well. Bubba Garnett averaged 12 points and 10.5 rebounds a game. Phil Golgano averaged 8.4 points per game. The team was led by point guard Tim Downer. The star of the 1986-87 squad was Dave Heslam, a 6-foot-4 center from Brooks. In that season, Heslam averaged 28 points and 14 rebounds a game. He would eventually be named a McDonald’s Senior All-Star.

“If I had my pick out of anybody in the state that year to be on my team, I would have picked David Haslem, my center, as my first pick,” Reid said. “He was that good. I thought he was one of the best players in the state. He had (more than) 27 points per game his senior season. He had 1,738 points during his career at Mount View High School. A lot of people didn’t realize he had that many points.”

Heslam actually ended his career with 1,863 points, according to a March 3, 1987 Morning Sentinel article.

Mount View finished the 1986-87 regular season 17-1 and earned the No. 1 seed of the Eastern Class B tournament. The Mustangs beat No. 8 Ellsworth 69-59 in the quarterfinals and No. 5 Houlton 76-65 in the semifinals. The team then toppled No. 2 Rockland 58-52 in the regional final.

Greg Reid stands inside a Mount View High school bus Wednesday in Thorndike. Reid, who is a bus driver for the school, was the head coach of the Mount View boys basketball team when it won the Class B title in 1987. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel

On Feb. 28, 1987, The Mustangs would play Western B champion Gorham in the state final before an estimated crowd of 6,000 at the Augusta Civic Center. Held to just six points in the first half, Heslam finished with a game-high 30 points and pulled down 19 rebounds to lead Mount View to a 69-50 victory and its first Gold Ball.

Reid has stayed around the program through the years, even at one point sitting in on the bench — along with Brandon Hurd, an assistant at the time — under former head coach Chad Larrabee. These days, Reid said he enjoys the interaction with the players while driving them to and from games.

“(The kids) are very good on the bus, no problem whatsoever,” Reid said. “In fact, coming home from Bangor (after the C North title win) the other night, I said to the coaches, ‘God, they’re awful quiet, didn’t you guys just win the northern (title)?'”

Mount View’s history lesson won’t end with Reid. On Thursday, the team scheduled a Zoom chat with Heslam — who now lives in Colorado — while also watching film of the 1987 Class B title game.

“Some day, our banner may be the yellowed one up here in the gym,” Brandon Hurd said. “We treat our alumni with respect and always remember how we got there. Again, that ’87 team and Greg have been a huge inspiration. But this group, they’re very familiar with David Heslam, Bubba Garnett, all that group … (Heslam) is super-excited. His mom is coming from New Hampshire to come watch us. It’s really cool.”