by Amy Bass
“These girls,” she says, looking at the track, “are making their own identity as Muslim women.”
Sundus loves to run and jump with her teammates, who range in age from six to fourteen. Some wear tanks and shorts, others long, dark leggings or track pants under tunics and robes. Sundus runs in an oversize t-shirt, her bright hijab—sometimes strategically tied to improve aerodynamics—streaming behind her. Wettlaufer teaches the girls how to fly over hurdles and kick across the finish line, while a Bates student explains the mechanics of the triple jump to a small group on the side. Still others work on baton passes for the relay, crying, “STICK!” until a smooth transition is made.
“Who’s going to be on the relay?” they ask Wettlaufer when he strolls by, clipboard in hand. They know it’s competitive, an honor to be chosen. Their collective speed is extraordinary, and they have broken many long-standing state records.
Sundus is also interested in gymnastics and cheerleading, but track feels more appropriate, safer, to Halima. “Peaceful” is the word she uses to describe watching practice in the hot sun, the sequins on her dark hijab sparkling. Gymnastics feels less so, although Halima lets Sundus take a tumbling class. Cheerleading, a big deal at Lewiston High School, whose perennial championship squad is known for gravity-defying acrobatic feats, is out of the question.
“She could get hurt,” Halima worries, tempering the thoughts that fester in the head of anyone who remembers Somalia. The violence left behind always remains near, complicating the daily battle to survive. Along with the quest to learn English, go to school, and find a job, keeping family safe and close is the top priority. Family is the only thing many refugees brought with them. It is what must be preserved above all else.
“Running is better,” she concludes.
While she doesn’t want her daughter to play soccer, Halima is her father’s progeny. She knows a lot about the sport, attending games whenever she can and talking strategy with her mother, who sometimes brings a prayer rug to games in case the team needs a little extra help. She cheers her brothers and supports her father, who coaches as many teams as he can, including high school summer soccer with his son Abdijabar. He holds impromptu sessions with players on weekday afternoons at Marcotte Park, something that once caused a rash of phone calls to the police and City Hall, the park’s neighbors worried about the group of immigrants gathering. When the middle school season ends, he finds tournaments for the kids to play in, including an annual tournament each spring in Ohio. Maulid still meets with him occasionally in the Colisée parking lot to run drills.
“He is,” says Abdikadir Negeye, “the coach of everyone.”
In many ways, Abdi sealed the deal on a new era of soccer in Lewiston. Just about any player who lands on McGraw’s varsity roster these days has worked with him. Like Gish, Abdi doesn’t like “boot and scoot” or “kick and chase” soccer. He encourages players to keep the ball down, controlled. He wants them to understand the difference between passing and kicking, the importance of the first touch, and how to trust a teammate to take the ball.
Under Abdi’s tutelage, future varsity squads capitalized on the thousands of touches they accumulate before high school, forcing McGraw to rework his strategies and figure out new ways to build on the skills that Abdi honed. Unlike McGraw’s rosters of the past, most Somali players don’t have the size or heft to play a physical game. They compensate for their lean build by using speed, talent, and the strong communication skills, in English or otherwise, that came from years of playing together.
Abdi is an elegant, constant presence at Lewiston games, usually dressed in dark trousers and a loose button-down shirt, sandals on his feet when weather permits. Arms folded across his chest, he often paces the sideline, usually by himself, catching every nuance of each play. Other days he sits in the bleachers off to the side.
“Quick, quick, quick,” he says, sometimes to himself, sometimes so the players can hear. He wants to see fast feet, quick touches, and good passes.
His access to the team is atypical. Players never ask for permission from McGraw to confer with Abdi, which they do frequently during both practice and games. From the sideline, he will pull a player aside, putting his arm around him as they pace together, his head of short-cropped graying hair leaning in as he offers a gentle correction to what he has seen. Other times, he will beckon from the bleachers.
“Joe,” he calls, without seeming to raise his voice.
Joséph Kalilwa, a defender who just took a shot on goal and is now headed for the bench, looks up and immediately jogs over to Abdi. Joe, who lived in Nashville before Lewiston, is one of a handful of players from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a powerful athlete with more bulk than most of his teammates. He lives with his father and his older sister, Adela, an outstanding athlete who played soccer and ran track in high school before heading to the University of Southern Maine. There, she has continued her illustrious track career while staying very involved in Joe’s well-being.
“Passing is better,” Coach Abdi starts. Joe immediately nods.
It is a speech Joe has heard many times before. A quiet, thoughtful kid off the field, Joe loves to battle on the pitch, powering through the opposition and taking the ball downfield, dribbling the whole way. He’s also funny. McGraw loves to tell the story about the time a white kid from another team yelled “Go home!” at Joe on the field. “Where, to Walnut Street?” Joe yelled back and kept running.
After a brief conversation with Abdi, Joe jogs back to the bench. When McGraw puts him back in, he passes the ball almost immediately.
Sometimes after a game or practice, Abdi will ask McGraw for a moment with the team to share something he has noticed. It is a formality, as McGraw always says yes.
“Come,” Abdi says, pointing to a few players. They rise and join him in front of the team. He moves them around, explaining a new formation or strategy. They are unflaggingly respectful while he holds the floor. When he is finished, McGraw thanks him, and the players clap as the two coaches hug.
In 2014, Jason Fuller hired Abdijabar Hersi as freshman coach. It seemed fitting that Abdi’s son, who graduated in 2008, would be the high school’s first Somali coach.
The lack of diversity in Lewiston’s teaching and coaching staffs recently came to light in February 2017, when three groups—the ACLU of Maine, Disability Rights Maine, and Pine Tree Legal Assistance—sent a letter to the school district alleging discrimination against students of color and English-language learners. Among the many accusations cited, such as discipline disparities—immigrant students are suspended at a disproportionate percentage—and communication problems, was the lack of black teachers in the schools. While current superintendent Bill Webster refuted many of the allegations, calling it a “hatchet job” and citing Lewiston’s ever-improving graduation statistics, he acknowledged the lack of black staff, but said he was hopeful for change in the future.
Hersi’s hire as freshman soccer coach, which was significant for the district, also ensured players a smoother transition from his father’s squad at the middle school to the high school team.
“He brings them to me,” Hersi says about his dad. “I get ’em ready, and then they go to Gish or McGraw…They are ready when they come up to the varsity level.”
Good-natured and sociable, his smile peeking out from the floppy L.L. Bean hat he wears to protect his light tan skin from the sun, Hersi still plays a lot of soccer. He has league games up to three times a week and loves playing at Somali Stadium in what he calls the “go-go-go” game. Hersi doesn’t remember Mogadishu, where he was born, but he has what he calls a “glimpse” of Somalia. He remembers Merca, a port city on the Indian Ocean some sixty or so miles southwest of the capital. Though it was a key Al-Shabaab battle point in recent years, Hersi recalls it as a beautiful city, especially the family’s large house facing the water. Even stronger are his memories of his grandparents’ house in Kenya and the move to Georgia when he was nine.
Hersi liked Atlanta, where he started third grade. He appreciated the help he got from his teachers. There were no ELL programs or interpreters; it was up to him to learn English, but there was another student in his class who spoke Somali, providing some security. A self-described “people person,” when he wasn’t reading, he practiced imitating his peers, staring at their mouths when they spoke, listening to the sounds of their English. In a year, he was comfortable with the language.
Because of his dad, soccer and running were always part of his life. He ran with his father almost every morning. On the weekends, they found races to participate in, using them to stay in shape for soccer. His freshman year of high school in Atlanta, he tried out for the soccer team.
“I found out I was really good,” he says, despite the fact that he often played basketball to fit in with the other kids. “From there on, I have just been full-time soccer.”
Hersi thought about coaching for a long time. Even as a player, he liked helping teammates figure out what to do. He dabbled in coaching league and club teams, including Seacoast, but it wasn’t until Halima, his sister, called him that he took the next step.
“Hey, there’s a freshman position open,” Halima said after consulting the school district’s website. “You should go apply for it.”
“Ahh, I don’t know,” Hersi answered. He already had two jobs: as a customer service representative for L.L. Bean, and with Direct Support Professionals working with people with autism. But Halima encouraged him, so he put in his application.
“I always wanted to get into coaching,” he says. He shrugs, smiling, before saying the obvious. “My dad is a coach.”
Several people applied for the job, but when Hersi walked into the interview, Fuller knew he was the right person at the right time. Hersi, too, could feel it as he answered a barrage of questions from Fuller and McGraw.
“I already knew,” Hersi says Fuller later told him. “As soon as I saw your name, I was happy.”
McGraw was excited to add Hersi to the coaching staff, and not just because he finally had someone who could shout directives in Somali, something he knew would be a strategic advantage, keeping other teams in the dark. He had spent years wrapping his head around the changes taking place on his roster and in his classroom. He’d buried himself in books and attended coaching conferences and clinics. But most of all he listened to the people around him, knowing he needed them if he was going to win a championship with these players.
“I needed to take who their mentors were, like Abdullahi Abdi and Abdijabar, all of those leaders in the community who coached them,” he says. “I embraced them and listened to them. And I listened to the players, because I wanted, I needed, to understand.”
Fuller views McGraw’s relationship with Coach Abdi and the hiring of Hersi as further evidence of how much McGraw changed to accommodate his evolving roster. He became a better, more inclusive, coach, and developed a deeper level of trust with his faster, experienced players.
“He was the first coach in our department to say, ‘If I’m going to be good, and I’m going to relate to these kids, I’ve got to go into the community.’”
Hiring Hersi represented another coming-of-age for Somalis and Blue Devils soccer, which increasingly didn’t have to think about how to be “speckled.” As the refugee community continued to lay strong roots in Lewiston, immigrant players became the norm. When Shobow graduated in 2011, his brothers, Benji and Garane, were already on the roster, continuing to carry the torch.
But community relationships remained fragile. While public incidents were rare, in 2009, when Newsweek wrote that Somalis had “revived” Lewiston, citing its All-American City award, those who still saw the newcomers as leeches became infuriated. “‘Revived’ my ass,” read one of the many hateful comments on the article. “They have done nothing good for our city…Seriously, find twenty people in Lewiston who are glad they are here. I know I can’t.”
Such talk wasn’t always reserved for online commentary or private conversations. Editorials in the conservative weekly Twin City Times continued to rant against Somalis, taking particular offense whenever they were compared to the city’s French-Canadian immigrants. “As a Franco, I find the comparison insulting!” wrote Roland Morin in 2010. “The people from Quebec came here to work—not to live off welfare!” And when the Sun Journal wrote about the ten-year anniversary of Somalis in Lewiston, one commenter wrote that the headline should’ve read, “10 years of Somalis on welfare,” while others tried to connect the story of Black Hawk Down to immigrants living in Lewiston.
When the BBC came to Lewiston to shoot a short documentary on the Somali community in 2012, Mayor Robert MacDonald, a former police detective and teacher, said he wished Somalis would “leave their culture at the door.” While the days of Mayor Raymond’s infamous letter and the pig’s head incident were long gone, MacDonald’s remarks demonstrated how racial and ethnic tensions festered in the shadows.
Many complained that his insensitive, intolerant remarks ignored much of Lewiston’s history, particularly in terms of preserving ethnic culture. Today, almost a quarter of Maine identifies as Franco-American. In Lewiston, the number hovers around 70 percent. With its French library and classes, the Franco-American Heritage Center keeps vigilant watch on the legacy of Québécois mill workers. Each month it hosts Le Recontre, a luncheon where only French is spoken. These days, French-speaking African asylum seekers often join their Franco neighbors at the lunch, the language bringing together the city’s past and its present.
MacDonald, however, was so invested in what Lewiston once was that he had trouble articulating what it had become. His predecessor, former police chief Larry Gilbert, who held the office of mayor for consecutive terms from 2007 to 2011 between Raymond and MacDonald, had heralded the city’s ethnic transformation, espousing a consistently progressive vision for the future. MacDonald, not so much.
In the BBC’s four-minute segment, MacDonald is featured sitting on a park bench. A heavyset man with golden hair, he’s dressed casually in a yellow polo shirt, his arm thrown over the back of the bench, eyes squinting in the brightness of the beautiful Maine day.
“The immigrants that have come in here have cost us a lot of money, and we are continuing to go with, to fight with, the federal government. You know, you brought them in, you pay for them,” he says in an unconcerned tone that belies the severity of what is coming out of his mouth. “Here, if you want to come in here, and you want to become a citizen, that’s fine. Welcome to America. But you know what? When you come here, you come and you accept our culture. And you leave your culture at the door.”
Shobow, for one, tried to make light of the comments, telling the Sun Journal the mayor must have meant leave shoes at the door, as Somalis never wear them inside.
“I don’t like saying bad things about other people, and I made my point,” Shobow recalls. “Becoming a citizen is not leaving your whole culture behind, it’s having the right to vote so that you can impact where you live.”
Others were less mild in their reaction to the mayor’s remarks, reawakening memories of Raymond’s letter from a decade before. City Hall protesters demanded that MacDonald recant his remarks, carrying signs that read “LEWISTON IS BETTER THAN THIS” and “WE WANT A SINCERE APOLOGY.” More than a thousand people signed a petition demanding that he resign.
MacDonald refused to apologize, instead attempting to clarify his remarks. He made things much worse. “If you believe in it so much,” he said of Somali culture in an interview on WGME-TV, the local CBS affiliate, “why aren’t you over there shedding blood to get it? Why are you here shirking your duties?”
A week later, he spoke to an overflowing crowd in the City Council’s chamber at City Hall. Dressed in a pale beige blazer and a yellow tie, he donned his reading glasses and stared at the typed remarks in his hand. Stumbling a bit, he said the BBC took his remarks out of context. He meant Somalis needed to assimilate to American culture, not aba
ndon their own. He acknowledged that immigrants “enriched the diversity” of the city.
“As mayor,” he concluded, “I value every person in the city of Lewiston.”
But the BBC interview was not an isolated incident. MacDonald’s controversial policy ideas, including a public website that listed names and addresses of welfare recipients and a moratorium on subsidized housing in Lewiston, sparked national attention. His often-inflammatory column for the Twin City Times included comments about “submissive Somali women” who “turn into obnoxious customers at the grocery store cash register,” condemning the “boo-hoo white do-gooders” who support them. He wrote that there was only “one dominant central culture,” American culture. He told tales about his years working at Lewiston Middle School, claiming that the Somali girls studied hard, but the boys were indifferent to schoolwork.
The BBC interview highlighted MacDonald’s positions and, more importantly, those who elected him, bringing racial and religious tensions back into the headlines. Less than a year after the BBC incident, he would be reelected, his supporters further emboldened to leave hateful comments about Somalis on the websites of local newspapers. The Sun Journal eventually barred anonymous posts.
But Mike McGraw doesn’t read the comments section, often joking that he isn’t “very observant.” In terms of what some people say about his players, that’s a very good thing. He keeps his focus on the field, urging players to value and trust one another, which enables him to avoid the political fray. But Fuller knows all too well how changes to the soccer roster in recent years have engendered animosity in the broader community. He has no patience for those who claim kids from the “outside” are playing more than “native” kids or that the program had been “taken” by those it didn’t belong to.
