One Goal

by Amy Bass

  From his bedroom, Maulid can hear if kids are playing at Drouin; if so, he can be on the field in minutes. After working on the flip on his own for a few weeks, he decided to try it in a game. “Hey, Coach!” he announced to McGraw with a sly smile. “I got a flip throw.”

  “All right,” McGraw grunted. “Just don’t break your neck.”

  McGraw was curious. Adding a flip throw to the team’s arsenal could be a game-changer; “something dangerous,” as Maulid put it. No one else in the league had one. McGraw knew Maulid had the goods to flip with the ball, but did he have the precision to make it effective? Get it to arc into the attacking third so someone could put a bullet on it with a head or lob it in from the far post? That would be something, McGraw thought, watching Maulid. It would also be something if he landed on his butt.

  The mechanics of a flip throw are complicated. A player backs up from the sideline, judging where his feet will land when he comes around. Stepping over the line brings a whistle, something that happens often enough with a regular throw-in. Toeing the line while coming out of a front handspring is a whole different thing.

  Speed is critical. After gaining momentum for several gazelle-like steps, Maulid holds the ball up, hands firmly planted on either side, before plunging downward to bounce it on the ground, flipping his legs over his head. When his feet land on the other side, he clenches his stomach muscles, forcing his body upward as he brings the ball over his head, launching it over the field.

  Maulid tried out the move a few times toward the end of his sophomore season with poor results, the ball soaring out of bounds. But he began to perfect it the following summer. As he got more confident, his aim got better, the ball landing closer to the box. Other teams reacted by sending everyone to the net in anticipation, something Maulid sometimes played with—he’d do the run, and then just throw the ball over his head, no flip. It kept everyone on their toes.

  McGraw watched Maulid, likely his only junior starter in the fall, thinking about how other teams would react to a flip throw. He liked to have some elements of surprise before starting a new season. A flip throw was exactly that: unexpected.

  Also unexpected was Maslah Hassan.

  Dripping with athletic gifts, Maslah walks with the swagger of a rock star, exuding confidence from head to toe. When he enters a room, all eyes shift to him. Magnetic, tall and lean, with legs that appear skinnier than his arms, he towers over most of his teammates, his angled high-top adding a few extra inches. But even if he didn’t, they would still look up to him. Just as adults light up when talking about what a good kid Abdi H. is, younger players speak of Maslah in awed tones.

  In late spring of 2015, Fuller caught wind that Maslah, who last played soccer for Lewiston his sophomore year, might come back. Rumors sparked that McGraw was recruiting talent to ensure a championship title, and that Maslah, who’d played as a freshman and junior for Edward Little, was shopping around for the best team. Maslah was used to gossip and trash talk. No matter where he landed, people called him a turncoat, a traitor, asking why he moved so much. “Keep your mouth shut,” he said whenever gossip reached him. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  Finally, Maslah decided to tell his story, hoping to quell the chatter. He sat for an interview with Kevin Mills, writer of the Sun Journal’s thoughtful, award-winning series about the impact of immigrants on local soccer, “Fútbol (R)evolution.” Just a few minutes into their conversation, Mills realized that while Maslah’s story started like those of so many refugees, his had an added layer of tragedy.

  Maslah’s parents, Salima Nuh and Abdi Maalim, married in Bu’aale, a farming city in the southern Jubba River Valley. She was seventeen years old; he was nineteen. Soon after, the horrors of civil war came to their door. The young couple lost everything as their village burned, and Nuh, like so many other Bantu women, was brutally assaulted. The couple began the dangerous two-week excursion to the Kenyan border. Their journey was typical: hiding from roaming militia during the day, traveling only at night, trying to avoid bandits looking to rob and rape, including the guards policing the Kenyan borders against invaders. Finally, the couple hired a car to complete the trip.

  Life in Dadaab was tough, the dangers of refugee camp life always lurking. When out getting wood with some other women, again Nuh was raped. Getting out of the camps became even more urgent.

  In 2004, they landed in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but soon headed north to Lewiston. Nuh became active in the community, building on some of the training she had received in Kenya on peace education and conflict resolution. She helped launch a number of initiatives for women in particular. One program connected women who did not speak English with jobs cleaning houses. Another helped them get their driver’s licenses.

  Maslah attended Lewiston schools until eighth grade, playing organized soccer for the first time in middle school. But when his parents’ relationship grew strained, he moved across the Androscoggin to Auburn. His freshman year at Edward Little, he was the soccer team’s top scorer. His home life still unstable, in 2013 he returned to Lewiston, playing his sophomore season alongside middle school friends. While competing for the Blue Devils meant playing with a deeper talent pool, Maslah still stood out, netting ten goals.

  The Blue Devils made it to the regional final that year, as they had the year before, but lost. For Maslah, dropping the game paled to what happened a few weeks later. His mother, thirty-seven years old and seven months pregnant with her eleventh child, left for work in nearby Brunswick in her Volkswagen Passat. She never made it. Robert Robataille, a fifty-two-year-old captain and paramedic for the Brunswick Fire Department, apparently fell asleep at the wheel of his pickup truck while driving west on Route 196 in Topsham near the Lisbon town line. As his truck headed down a steep hill, it crossed the centerline and drifted into oncoming traffic, colliding with Nuh’s eastbound car. The hospital treated Robataille for mild injuries and released him. Nuh died in the crash.

  For Maslah, the death of his mother meant yet another move for the already itinerant family. Soccer was the one thing he didn’t need to pack each time he crossed the river. No matter where he lived, he played every day. It was his outlet. When he needed to, he took a ball outside—anywhere, no matter what the weather—to dribble and kick until he felt better. It was more than a coping mechanism. Soccer gives him, he says, a little bit of hope when he needs it. Like so many of his friends, soccer is his everything.

  Maslah returned to Edward Little for junior year. While he had a great soccer season as the go-to offensive guy, the Red Eddies sat, season finished, while the Blue Devils made their failed championship run against Cheverus.

  As McGraw started to put together his 2015 summer schedule, plotting the team’s path back to the championship game, Maslah paid Fuller a visit. He made his priorities clear: he wanted to play soccer for Lewiston. However, Fuller wouldn’t leave anything to chance. “I am happy to see you,” he told the lanky teenager. “But I have to make sure everything is on the up-and-up.”

  As Lewiston High School principal, Shawn Chabot relies on people like the athletic director to do their jobs, and do them well. The school is too big to operate any other way. Chabot had to sign Maslah’s transfer, but he trusted Jason Fuller to make sure everything was aboveboard.

  While Fuller looks military, Chabot is military, serving as first sergeant in the medical unit of the National Guard in Augusta. He took the reins of LHS in February of 2015, when Gus LeBlanc’s replacement didn’t work out. Before that, he was principal of the middle school for three years, and of McMahon Elementary for six.

  Chabot understood LeBlanc’s legacy better than most. Chabot grew up in Dexter, Maine, home of the eponymous shoe company. He is French-Canadian on his father’s side; his mother hails from Harlingen, Texas, located in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley, where her family moved from Mexico.

  About a ninety-minute drive northwest from Lewiston, Dexter essentially shut down when the shoe manufacturer left. C
habot, born Christmas Eve in 1970, was the last baby born in the local hospital before it closed on New Year’s Day. Chabot grew up just down the street from LeBlanc in Dexter and played on one of his state championship football squads.

  “I always looked up to him, feared him, like, scared to death of him,” Chabot remembers. “As a football coach, he was the real deal.”

  Although a football guy, Chabot knew about Lewiston’s soccer team through his college roommate, Dan Gish. Chabot knew a lot of the players, understood that soccer was their passion and that the loss to Cheverus weighed heavily on them. He knew that beyond the game, the team was a group of nice kids—“good human beings.”

  When rumors about Maslah’s return began to circulate, Chabot had been principal for only a few months. But he already had confidence in Fuller and the coaches to do the right thing. In June, Fuller put things into motion; made some phone calls, poked around. His investigation ended with a home visit. As he pulled up to the address on Allen Court, he smiled. He knew this building; a friend owned it. Years ago, Fuller himself had lived there, occupying an apartment on the first floor. This is legit, he thought. Maslah is back.

  When Fuller told McGraw that everything checked out, the coach smiled when he heard Maslah’s new address. He, too, knew the place well; his grandmother had once lived there. He’d spent many a Sunday dinner, adults speaking French and kids speaking English, in Maslah’s new home.

  Maulid, for one, was excited about Maslah’s return. The two are cousins, although neither is sure how they are related.

  “Maslah is like a brother to me,” Maulid says. Maslah, too, felt good about playing on a team with family.

  But McGraw wanted to make sure he had his ducks in a row. He called Matt Andreasen, Edward Little’s coach, to assure him he hadn’t helped persuade Maslah to move back. “I wouldn’t do that,” he told the rival coach. “I just want what’s best for the students.”

  There was more to hash out than Maslah’s residency. Andreasen had counted on Maslah as a star player, while McGraw saw him as one component of a very deep team. Abdi H. scored twenty-five goals in 2014; Karim, fourteen. Both were returning. McGraw needed to make sure Maslah understood that. The two talked about the role shift. McGraw wanted to put Maslah at striker and move Karim back to the midfield. “Are you capable,” McGraw asked Maslah, “of playing a role, not the role, on this team?”

  The role of a star player versus the strength of the team is a popular debate in sports. The final of the Men’s World Cup in 2014, for example, posed Lionel Messi against a deep German squad. While Argentina’s captain took home the Golden Ball for best player, he couldn’t overturn his team’s 1–0 extra-time loss.

  Maslah listened to teammates, friends, coaches, teachers, and Fuller. It was tough to leave EL, where he was doing well academically. But the pull of family, the pull of Lewiston, and the pull of McGraw, someone Maslah saw as a second father, won out. Maslah trusted almost no one, but he trusted McGraw. He knew his coach would help him, both on and off the field. “Screw it,” he told friends. “I just want to play soccer. Lewiston is home. It’s where everything started. Besides,” he said mischievously, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

  The phrase accompanied his senior photo in the yearbook.

  Maslah joined the Blue Devils for summer games, where his teammates started to accept him again. But McGraw was uncomfortable with the “traitor” label tattooed on Maslah’s shoulders. This team didn’t need any additional drama as they pulled themselves back into the hunt for a state title. Summer games were an important time to work things out as a team; to experiment, communicate, and gather. He worried that Maslah’s return might threaten these efforts and considered whether he should even let the rising senior play. Eventually, he compromised, making Maslah sit out the summer game against Edward Little. Tensions during that game would be bad enough, McGraw reasoned. They didn’t need to add to it by putting Maslah on the field.

  McGraw tried not to get too excited about Maslah’s return. Kids came and went, he knew, especially immigrant kids. They hit the pitch over summer and disappeared come fall. But then he looked at Q, ready to tear up the midfield after spending his junior year in upstate New York. Sure, they’d graduated some good players. Mike. Speedy. Ibrahim. But the idea of adding Maslah to the core of returning veterans, to see Maslah play alongside Abdi H. and Karim and—

  McGraw stopped himself. Not yet. It wasn’t time to think about it yet.

  When summer season ended and Maslah came to tryouts, McGraw finally began to reconfigure his game plan. He realized that Maslah wasn’t the same kid who’d played for him in 2013. Maslah exhibited far more maturity, physical and mental. He reassured McGraw that he knew it wasn’t always about scoring or getting the assist. The team had one goal: to return to the state final and win.

  Still, McGraw worried. He worried that Maslah and Abdi H. might compete against each other for goals. He worried about the impact their relationship might have on the rest of the team. He asked Coach Abdi and Kim Wettlaufer what they thought about the two stars playing together. “It will be fine,” both said. He talked to Maslah and Abdi H. “Don’t worry,” they told him. “We’re good. We’ve been playing together, 365 days a year, since fifth grade.” For Abdi H., welcoming Maslah defined what it meant to be on a team; something he thought about a lot. Maslah’s return helped him understand it better.

  “Everybody tries to work together to accomplish that one goal,” he says about the day he learned Maslah was definitely back. “Trying to do your own thing is not as fun.”

  Abdi H.’s perspective about Maslah speaks volumes about him as a person and a player. Taking the role of captain very seriously, Abdi H. was always as supportive of the weakest member of the team as he was of the best. Going into his senior year, he was on track to be the highest-scoring soccer player in the school’s history. He knew his numbers, but he wasn’t worried about what having Maslah up front would mean for them. He just wanted that state trophy.

  In many ways, Abdi H. doesn’t see in himself the leader that others do. Every time Eric Wagner visits Lewiston from Swarthmore, he is jolted by how special a player Abdi H. is, and not just from a coach’s perspective.

  “He could’ve gone one of two ways—could’ve been a real arrogant, obnoxious braggart who doesn’t really do any good for his team or his community,” Wagner says. “But this kid is one of the most humble, soft-spoken, respectful, mature, intelligent kids to come out of Lewiston ever—and not just school smarts; people smarts, emotional smarts.”

  Wagner takes a moment to think about the respect he has for the young player. “It’s unbelievable,” he says, his voice more quiet. “Interacting with him is a really unique experience.”

  Watching Abdi H. play is a singular experience as well, one that leaves both fans and local sportswriters scratching their heads. More incredible than his speed, which is awesome, is his creativity, his unpredictability. He sees things on the field that no one else can, does things nobody expects.

  “He’s got a mentality for the game that is in a fourth dimension, a dimension of virtuoso musicians, incredible artists, unbelievable writers—people like that just have it,” observes Wagner of watching Abdi H. play.

  Already one of the best in the state, the summer before his senior year, Abdi H. somehow managed to get better, doubling down on his already strong work ethic. Not one to cruise on natural talent and athleticism, he worked on his game, his side-to-sides and feints, his free kicks and corners. He bettered his ability to move the ball downfield, using his agility to stop and start, skip and hesitate, beating opponents at every angle. He stayed up late watching soccer online; studying the game, thinking about strategies the team could develop. He watched soccer at Bates, taking notes on team communication.

  With this intense focus, his already creative approach to the sport became even more innovative. Wagner remembers one game that summer in which the rising senior did something that utterl
y shocked him. A ball was coming in at a very sharp angle to Abdi H.’s run. Gauging how fast he was flying across the field, Wagner figured he would take the ball in stride and turn it in the direction he was already heading.

  Abdi H. had other plans.

  He flicked the ball behind the defender chasing him. He then made a sharp cut back onto the ball, leaving himself alone to goal. As the ball swished into the net, Wagner sat, stunned, wishing there was an instant replay so he could dissect what he’d just seen. It wasn’t only speed. It was seeing an angle, a different facet on the field, that no one else saw, and then exploiting it in the blink of an eye.

  By mid-August, the team was back together, gearing up for the twenty-team tournament that Lewiston hosts annually. The captains—Maslah, Karim, Austin, and Abdi H.—had to design a tournament shirt. Austin and Abdi H. took on the task. Austin envisioned a giant soccer ball on the front of a bright blue shirt encircled by “LEWISTON SOCCER.” But what about the back? They needed a phrase that captured just how important this season, and the quest for a state title, was going to be.

  It hit Abdi H. one night while watching soccer, as usual. The slogan for U.S. Soccer: “One Nation, One Team.” He looked up the slick World Cup campaign on YouTube. It perfectly encapsulated how he felt about the coming season. Soccer is not just a game; it’s not just a sport. It’s life. They just had to alter the first part and add a third phrase.

  “Many Nations, One Love,” he texted Austin. “One Team.”

  Austin agreed. He would tell the Booster Club to order them.

  Shirts done, it was time to start double sessions: morning and afternoon practices held on the same day. After McGraw spent a week at Old Orchard Beach with his family, an annual tradition where he stayed out late on the pier to eat French fries and listen to live music, he was ready to jump in, excited and nervous. He still got the jitters right before the first practice. I just need to get past the first day, he thought. Once we’re in our routine, it will all shake out.