THE FORKS — "Everybody OK? Anybody go in?"

Mark Oliver's eyes and voice bounced between the three whitewater rafts filled mostly with teenagers, approaching a beach on the upper Kennebec River. The boys had enough energy to pull the large rafts out of the water. Just enough.

Hours earlier they went through the Upper Kennebec Gorge, where if the raging water of Magic Falls doesn't tip your raft, the action at Whitewash or Big Mama might.

Oliver tried again. "Nobody went in?"

He is the wrestling coach at Auburn High, a small town some 50 miles from Lincoln in the southeast corner of Nebraska. The boys in the rafts were wrestlers picked to take part in the 25th Maine-Nebraska Friendship Series.

After meets earlier this week at York and Oak Hill high schools, it was obvious Oliver has a superior team.

By midweek, if you believed the adult jokesters among the Maine contingent, there was a plan to tire out the Nebraska wrestlers by taking them on a whitewater raft trip only hours before Friday's competition at Cony High in Augusta.

Nice idea, but the side trip has been part of the guests' itinerary before. Oliver has scars on his fingers to prove it. His raft spilled its seven occupants on a previous trip through Whitewash. "It was my near-death experience. I saw the bright light. I got saved by a group of girls."

That trip was run through a commercial rafting outfit, which had a photographer at Whitewash that day. "I've got the photos, frame-by-frame. From when we're still in the raft, to the dumping, to the empty raft. There was a flash of blue (sky) and I bulldozed everybody out. The next thing I know, I wasn't on the river. I was underneath the raft."

Not a good place to be.

Apparently, the night before Friday's trip down the Kennebec, Oliver retold his story. His wrestlers are very coachable kids. They listened, maybe too well.

At Harris Station Dam, where the rafts put into the Kennebec, there have been large signs warning rafters of the risks ahead. That this part of the Kennebec is not easily accessed by medical help. That one could lose his or her life.

"I saw signs," said Kiefer Coatney, who wrestled for Oliver at Auburn. "I don't think I saw that one. I wasn't worried. I was more excited. But the (guide) in our boat kept telling us he was going to hit everything and anything."

That would be Bruce Cooper, the former Lawrence High coach during the Cindy Blodgett years. He worked the Kennebec nearly 35 years ago with Tom Wells, the former Cony wrestling coach and a veteran whitewater guide. Last year, Wells organized a weeks-long trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon that included Cooper and more than a dozen others. Wells organized Friday's trip of three rafts. His son, last year's state hurdles champ, Max HoddWells of Maranacook, manned the third raft.

"I had six Nebraska kids in my boat and three picked up their paddles when we started and three just hung on," said Wells. "All their eyes were pretty big."

Hey, Nebraska rivers are languid pools by comparison. You spend a summer day on a river floating on a tube, watching the scenery slowly go by.

"We took some beautiful hits in the gorge," said Wells. "Halfway through you get Whitewash and usually three waves of 10, 12, 14 feet. I took them into the soft side. I didn't want to lose anyone."

He gained river veterans. No one was tossed from the rafts.

"I couldn't expect what would happen, even after talking with Coach Oliver," said Dusty Stodola, a three-time state champ from Schuyler, Neb., north of Lincoln. "It was thrilling. The water was cold."

The Maine wrestlers in the Augusta area who hosted their Nebraska counterparts the night before could have pointed that out. But then, they were back home, resting up for the meet.

"I tried to tire them out," said Wells. "They look tired. But man, they still look tough."

It's what champion wrestlers are.

Staff Writer Steve Solloway can be contacted at 791-6412 or at:

ssolloway@pressherald.com