by Amy Bass
“I think you’re gonna get a new ball,” McGraw said.
The boy looked into McGraw’s car, his eyes stopping with disappointment at the old ball in the back.
“Not now,” McGraw told him. “You tell your sister to come find me, and I’ll find a ball for you.”
McGraw goes crazy keeping track of the team’s balls. When a player kicks one over the fence during practice, he yells for someone, anyone, to get it, fast. He knows it’s a matter of minutes before a group of kids on the other side will commandeer it for their own game. Every time he sees a kid kicking a ball in a parking lot or on one of the patches of dirt that runs between apartments houses, he wonders if it is one of his. He loves how the game saturates the city, but he has a limited budget for balls. But McGraw’s heart usually wins over his head. He will make sure that kid gets a new ball.
In 1974, when math teacher Paul Nadeau (no relation to assistant city administrator Phil) decided Lewiston High School needed a soccer team, he was on trend. Soccer was having a rare heyday, the North American Soccer League taking off when the New York Cosmos brought Pelé out of retirement and signed him to a three-season contract. Even soccer haters—and in the United States, then and now, there are many—knew about O Rei, the King, as Pelé was called. The Brazilian legend broke through the international scene as a seventeen-year-old in 1958 at the World Cup, scoring a hat trick against France for a 5–2 semifinal win. In the final, he netted two more against host Sweden, ensuring Brazil’s victory.
The savvy marketing strategies of the Cosmos brought tens of thousands of people to see Pelé play. His celebrity created instant soccer fans, particularly among middle- and upper-class white families. The league “Americanized” the game to cultivate fans. It replaced the offside midfield line with a thirty-five-yard line in hope of putting higher numbers on the scoreboard. To avoid ties, it added a dramatic shoot-out. American fans, it seemed, needed a game to end with a winner and, perhaps more important, a loser.
While the NASL folded in 1984 (it would reemerge in 2009), soccer continued to grow at the community level. A relatively inexpensive sport, soccer was good for kids with speed and deft feet, and for those who didn’t seem to fit anywhere else—not tall enough for basketball; not beefy enough for football; couldn’t skate; couldn’t afford a bat, a glove, a helmet.
Paul Nadeau knew how to build a team. Born in Lewiston in 1946, he epitomized the elusive “all-rounder” athlete; good at any game he tried. In high school, he played on championship football, hockey, and baseball teams. At the University of Maine at Farmington, he played basketball, soccer, and baseball, taking the team’s batting title three times.
But Nadeau, one of the school’s football coaches, knew that hawking soccer in Lewiston would be no mean feat; he would need whatever support he could muster. After getting approval from the school board, he started to look for players, pillaging the football team and pulling in kids who were getting ready for hockey season.
“They liked him,” McGraw says, “because his personality was so in tune for teenagers. It was like a magnet.”
Nadeau also was competitive. His dark, bushy eyebrows balanced out the wry smile that made it seem like he always had a plan. Wanting to get on the map quickly, he scheduled most of the first season against teams he knew he could beat. The Blue Devils finished their inaugural season 11–0–0. Nadeau was named Maine State Coach of the Year.
It was, remembers McGraw, “an eye-opener.”
“SOCCER ALIVE AND KICKING,” the yearbook screamed next to a team photo of shaggy-haired teenage boys who boasted a string of familiar local names, from Boucher and Cloutier to Dumont and Gosselin. “Lewiston High’s first soccer season proved to be quite successful as the new team pushed ahead to an impressive standing in the league.”
Within a year, McGraw came on board as an assistant coach.
McGraw took the parochial school route to Lewiston High School, attending the now-closed St. Joseph’s School. His mother’s sharp eye on his grades determined whether or not he played sports on any given day. He played basketball and football, and also ran track. In the summer, the left-handed second baseman played baseball.
In tenth grade, McGraw fell in love with biology and decided he wanted to be a teacher. When he was younger, he’d wanted to be an astronaut, a popular choice in the early days of space exploration. Figuring his grades would never be good enough, he changed to becoming a pilot but soon nixed that.
“I figured I wouldn’t want to be a pilot,” he says of his high school self. “I wouldn’t want to be a passenger if I was a pilot, either.”
McGraw graduated from the University of Maine at Gorham, now the University of Southern Maine, in 1972. In college, he added soccer to his sports schedule. One of his roommates, Jimmy Mingo, played on the team, which needed a few extra players. McGraw at first turned down the opportunity.
“I knew nothing about the game,” he remembers, “and probably was a bit put off by watching professional soccer and seeing players flopping and rolling around on the ground if they were barely touched.”
McGraw preferred the “brutality, intensity, and contact” of football. But Mingo persisted, and eventually McGraw volunteered to play scrimmages. He remembers being “clueless” and “with no skill.” But he was competitive and left-footed. Coach Joe Bouchard soon switched him from the scrimmage squad to the team. He learned how to clear the ball and get it to players who knew what they were doing. Bouchard put McGraw at left midfield, where he remained throughout his college career.
“I developed a bit of a touch with the ball, learned more about the game, and really enjoyed it, especially the competition,” McGraw remembers. “I never developed style or finesse, because there were other players who could do that.”
While McGraw never made scoring a priority, he did net two goals, both of which were accidents.
“The first was off a corner kick,” he recalls. “I ducked to head the ball and missed—it hit my shoulder and went in.” The second also came off a corner kick, which he fortuitously curved into the goal.
McGraw’s parents came to see him play, his mother filling a scrapbook with his sports clippings, something she does today with his coaching career. She thought soccer was dangerous because there were no helmets and pads, especially after McGraw landed on his head after a bicycle kick, knocking himself out in front of the bleachers.
After graduation, McGraw returned to his usual summer job working at his father-in-law’s brickyard. He’d met Rita when he was just fifteen years old at the Pal Hop, a weekly battle-of-the-bands that attracted kids from the area high schools. She stuck with him through college, something he says he still can’t figure out because of his wild ways.
After getting onto Lewiston’s substitute-teaching list, he took a permanent sub job at Montello teaching seventh-grade math. He was on his way.
A troubling course of events landed McGraw at the high school. Phys ed teacher Norm Parent, also former athletic director, drove off Route 202 into a brook on his way back from a hunting trip. Lewiston lost one of its sports legends. A star football player at Bates, Parent had led the team to Ohio’s Glass Bowl in 1946. At Lewiston High School, his football teams, composed primarily of Franco kids whose parents worked in the mills, won state championships, driven by what one former player called a “fearsome” coaching style.
Parent’s death caused some shuffling around at Lewiston High School, creating a hole in the biology schedule. McGraw was in the right place at the right time.
“I’ve been here ever since.”
While planning his first full year as a biology teacher, McGraw had no aspirations to coach. But going into his second soccer season, Nadeau needed him.
“I know that you played soccer for Gorham,” Nadeau said to McGraw. “Do you want to help?”
“I said, ‘Yeah, I would,’” remembers McGraw. “And that’s how I got in.”
For McGraw, there is no off-season. The team is on his mi
nd every day as he thinks through changes to make, strategies to try. He stays on top of “my kids,” as he calls them, all year long, tracking their grades, sending them to conditioning classes, asking about life at home. The Somali community can be fluid, with students coming and going depending on where their family network leads them. McGraw relies on his players to keep him up-to-date on everyone’s situation.
Sometimes when a player said good-bye, it didn’t mean forever, such as the case of Hassan “Q” Qeyle. McGraw was crushed when he found out the amiable midfielder was moving to Syracuse after his sophomore season. Born in a Kenyan camp to Somali parents, Q landed in Lewiston via Louisville in 2010, following a similar path as Abdi H. He knew Abdi H., but they didn’t have much interaction until Q arrived at Lewiston Middle School at the end of seventh grade. The next year, his soccer career began, first with the middle school team, and then at the high school. Sophomore year, he made varsity. He didn’t play much, but he got a taste of pursuing a championship.
Leaving Lewiston was hard on Q, especially because he arrived in Syracuse too late to try out for soccer. But he didn’t question it. His grandmother’s sister lived in Syracuse, and his grandmother wanted to give it a try. He stayed in touch with his Blue Devil teammates, who texted him after each game with the score and tidbits about the other team.
When McGraw heard that Syracuse wasn’t working for Q’s family, he didn’t dare hope the midfielder might come back. But there he was, back in Lewiston, ready for his senior year. He’d missed the heartbreak of the championship game against Cheverus, and now he was ready to get on the field and help them win.
McGraw had missed Q, and not just as a player. He was a great kid—a bit goofy, with a huge heart for his family and his friends. One coach heard Q always ate last at his house, making sure his siblings had enough to eat before he started.
He was also a good player. He had terrific ball-handling skills, able to take possession and move play forward. Q could control the middle, McGraw thought as he began to imagine next season with Q in the lineup, and feed the ball to the guys up top, like Abdi H.
But it wasn’t until June that McGraw could share his ideas with his team. Just as the school year started to wind down, he was allowed to call a team meeting to discuss next season.
“Today at 2:10,” said a voice over the school’s PA system, “all boys interested in playing soccer should meet in room 124A.”
Defender Dek Hassan was excited. It was time to stop talking about getting back to the state final; the time had come to actually get there. The hallways buzzed with motivated players. Maulid joked with backup goalie Alex Rivet, a hockey star with good hands and fast reflexes, that they should skip the meeting. Maulid and Alex are a study in contrasts, Maulid dressed in a bright dashiki he got at the Mogadishu Store on Lisbon Street, where his father used to sell clothes; Alex in a polo shirt and jeans, his dark hair taking a cue from Justin Bieber. But they share a sharp wit and an air of mischief. A serendipitous hallway encounter with McGraw nixed their plan to cut.
“We were kidding,” they assured their omniscient coach. “We’ll be there.”
As the players filed into McGraw’s classroom, they took off their hats and put their hoods down, knowing his rules. They kidded around with each other, touching base, reconnecting. Trash talk—a mixture of English, Somali, and Arabic—blended with the anxiety of what lay ahead. Students in t-shirts and shorts sat next to those in tunics and jeans. A freshman walked in wearing a beige kameez, the hem just grazing the top of his sandals.
Moe Khalid had considered skipping the meeting. It was easy to brush it off, pretend it didn’t matter. But he knew it did. Even though the first game of the season was months away, things already felt different. They were done being devastated. They had their spirit back. The team was tighter, the stakes were higher, and they had the experience. It was time, Moe said to the group, for “grind mode.”
McGraw had lost his warm and fuzzy demeanor. Gone was the nurturing biology teacher in a button-down shirt and tie. Now wearing his blue adidas shirt emblazoned with “COACH MCGRAW,” he shut the classroom door—something he rarely did when teaching—with a bang. Anyone who didn’t understand what was about to happen needed only to look at the expression on his face.
“Find a chair,” he barked. “If you can’t find a chair, then on the floor.”
He surveyed the room.
“And you,” he said to no one in particular, “leg off the table.”
Order immediately ensued. At the front of the classroom, where not fifteen minutes earlier he had joked with students about their end-of-the-year biology projects, McGraw stood for a moment, his blue eyes steady, his mouth in an uncharacteristic straight line. With a full season ahead and a state championship loss behind, there was nothing to smile about yet. He picked up a pile of papers and began to hand them out.
Preseason schedule. Summer schedule. Code of Conduct. Registration.
The preseason schedule was complicated: a mix of practices, double sessions, tryouts, and games, with a round-robin in Portland and a tournament hosted by Lewiston in mid-August. The summer schedule was simpler: the squad divided into two teams, Lewiston 1, composed of juniors and seniors; and Lewiston 2, freshmen and sophomores. Anyone with a signed permission slip and $10 for a shirt could play.
The Code of Conduct shot straight. Show up fifteen minutes before practice. Be on time for meetings and game departures. Care for all teammates, not just friends. Show sportsmanship. Be ready to learn. Be positive. Be a good role model. Be a good student. Be respectful—to coaches, to teammates, to teachers, to opponents, to officials. Be humble in winning, gracious in losing. Be an intense competitor and a leader in school. Be ready to step up—in a game, in class, in practice, or in the hallways.
“Fill them out so I can read them,” McGraw said about the registration form.
He picked up a pile of pens on his desk for those who came unprepared, staring hard at each kid who took one.
“The Code of Conduct means asking yourself these questions: Are you there on time? Are you coachable?”
His stern, serious demeanor left no doubt about the factors of making the team. It was not just about skills, speed, and seniority. It was about taking responsibility. By showing up to this meeting, he told them, you already have an edge over those who didn’t, even if those other players are better. Are you late? Have you ignored the rules? Those are the kinds of things that erase a kid from his roster.
“Be nice to your teachers, be good to each other.”
Years ago, McGraw cut two starters. When he posted the final roster, the two came and asked if he’d made a mistake. He assured them he hadn’t. One kid played hockey that winter; the hockey coach thanked McGraw for helping improve the kid’s attitude. The next fall, he tried out for soccer again. He made it, taking his proper position on the team, toeing the line in accordance with the code. His parents thanked McGraw, and he had a good season.
McGraw never heard from the other kid again.
“Some of you guys are gonna make it the first three days and then get out,” he told them, their heads bent over the forms, hands in motion. “It’s an unfortunate circumstance.”
As McGraw began to collect the forms, the din in the room grew—teasing, gossiping, swatting each other in the head.
“SETTLE DOWN!” he roared. Quiet returned instantly.
He talked to them about eligibility, stressing that the spring term determined whether or not they could play in the fall. Five passing courses for freshmen and sophomores; six for juniors and seniors. Summer school counted.
Dek listened to McGraw talk about eligibility. He hadn’t played junior year because of his grades, but he wasn’t going to miss his senior year. He was on track and would be ready for tryouts in August.
Dek is a charming kid, kind of quiet until he’s not. Then he is funny, effusive. He’s one of the least shy members of the team, he proudly claims, his voice harboring a touch of Afr
ican cadence. He is taller than a lot of his teammates and holds himself with a self-possessed confidence, an air of maturity that many kids his age haven’t found yet.
Born in Kenya, Dek spent two years in the Atlanta suburb of Clarkston before moving to Lewiston. In Clarkston, he played soccer for the Fugees, a team celebrated in the book Outcasts United, which he read in seventh grade. The book follows the Fugees in their early days, before Dek was there, outlining the difficult circumstances of the many different cultures and countries represented in Atlanta’s refugee-filled suburbs.
Dek liked Georgia. He liked the buzz of Atlanta, walking around the city streets, hanging out at Stone Mountain. By comparison, Lewiston seemed tame, quiet, and cold. His family moved in October, when Georgia was still warm. Dek didn’t like Maine’s weather, especially once the snow came. But his mother, who was determined to find a better life for her family, heard it would be easier to become citizens in Lewiston. Dek knew people in Lewiston that he’d met in the refugee camp, like teammates Moe Khalid and Abdirizak Ali. His mother said they might return to Atlanta once they were U.S. citizens. But they stayed. It was all right, Dek decided. Even the snow.
And now school was going well. He’d matured a lot in the last year, figured some things out. He had watched last year’s state championship. He used the same word as everybody else to describe it: heartbreaking. He knew they could do better, and he wanted to be part of it.
He looked up at Coach, who was still talking about the forms. He wanted to do it for this man, with this man. They had to get him a title. Coach McGraw never gives up, Dek thought. If there was another coach who’d never won anything in thirty years? That coach would quit, he would stop. But McGraw didn’t stop because he loves the game as much as we do. It’s just crazy, Dek thought. It’s crazy how badly we want to win. He just had to make sure he kept school in check.
“Go find your teachers and get help,” McGraw thundered, breaking into Dek’s thoughts. “It’s all about school,” he continued, explaining the equation of grades and credits toward graduation that every student-athlete had to adhere to. “Take care of eligibility.”
