by Amy Bass
“Typical Lewiston kid!” the ref replied, an answer McGraw knew all too well.
“We didn’t lose to Westbrook for a long time after that,” McGraw chuckles.
Wing could never get over the kinds of calls that Lewiston stomached, or the calls other teams didn’t get, especially now that Lewiston fielded a team with so many brown faces. And it wasn’t only with soccer. In 2007, a man threw some kind of substance into Mohamed Noor’s eyes at the New England Cross Country Championships in the wooded part of the course. Previously unbeaten, Lewiston’s star runner fell from second to 124th place, running much of the race with his eyes shut. An ambulance crew later treated him for extreme nausea; the perpetrator was never caught.
Wing knew the game he was watching was no exception. What about Mt. Ararat stepping over the line on every throw-in? he thought. But no. Instead, Lewiston got a red card for taunting, the refs visibly irritated that fans stormed the field, and went into overtime a man down.
Lewiston’s offense dominated overtime but couldn’t find the back of the net. Two minutes into the second overtime, Mt. Ararat did, redirecting a long throw-in. The Blue Devils collapsed on the field as the Eagles ran screaming to the cheers of the home crowd.
“The kid’s foot was over the line again,” a parent near Wing said, staring at the field. “His foot was definitely over the line.”
Coach McGraw felt the loss. It hurt. Years later, he can pull out an instant replay of that game as if it was yesterday.
“I kicked myself in the hind end because instead of taking a player out of the attacking zone and putting him defensively, I should’ve taken a midfielder and put him up in the attacking end,” he says of the lesson he learned that day. “Then, instead of attacking with four midfielders like we do, attack with three and still have five extra guys—our defenders can hold their own. Or even take an extra defender off and put him up front, because we were that good.”
McGraw knows that hindsight is twenty-twenty. But the loss to Mt. Ararat was a wake-up call. Never again would he panic when playing a man down.
A year later, in 2013, Lewiston returned to the regional final, this time against Hampden Academy. The Blue Devils trailed by a goal at halftime, their fast-paced offense slowed by a strong Bronco defense. With Austin Wing, now a sophomore, in goal, Lewiston launched an uncompromising comeback in the second half that forced the game into overtime. But it ended in heartbreak: a Hampden header happened so fast Austin barely had time to think about warding it off. Reaching the state championship game had become Lewiston’s ultima Thule, seemingly in reach yet unattainable.
“You guys have been so snakebitten!” other coaches said to McGraw, reeling off snapshots from Lewiston’s greatest defeats: last-second throw-ins going in, balls hitting off the back. Losing big games became Lewiston’s calling card.
The 2014 season changed that.
The team emblazoned its new attitude on the back of a t-shirt senior midfielder Mike Wong designed. “Our Turn,” it announced above the outline of a player on his knees, arms outstretched overhead in victory. The boys were confident, in sync. They dominated opponents, playing a fierce offense that paid little heed to anyone’s defense. Their backline, composed of a mix of Wong, Zak Abdulle, Aden “Biwe” Mohamed, and Ibrahim Hussein, protected what the fleet feet of the offense put into the net, offensive energy feeding defensive determination.
At the end of the regular season, twin city rival Edward Little High School, which sits atop Goff Hill in Auburn just across the Androscoggin River, forced the Blue Devils to play from behind for the first time that fall. But they made up for it in the second half, scoring three times in the last twelve minutes of the game. Karim Abdulle and Abdi Shariff-Hassan—Abdi H.—converted penalty kicks. Senior Gage Cote met a cross from Hassan “Speedy” Mohamed, a kid whose nickname fit so well even his mother adopted it, and lasered it into the net.
Speedy was the kind of kid McGraw liked to spring on other teams. He wasn’t the prettiest of soccer players, but the champion sprinter moved faster than anyone McGraw had ever seen, from midfield to the box and back again in a flash. If the opposition’s defense tried to chase him down, which was almost impossible, more opportunities opened for his teammates. If the opposition decided he couldn’t be defended, he could get the ball in front of someone for a shot, as he did with Gage.
McGraw was thrilled that his team successfully came from behind, knowing it was good preparation for the playoffs. The Blue Devils ended the regular season 13–0–1, marking only the third time the team finished undefeated, and the first time since 1981. Finally, they were the top seed heading into the playoffs.
As the t-shirt said, it was their turn.
After handily making their way through the postseason bracket, the Blue Devils knew they had the chops to beat Brunswick in the regional final. Lewiston’s front line netted sixty-six goals that season, while the defense allowed only twelve. They’d won four of their last seven games in shutouts.
But the team had to make some adjustments when two key defenders were benched after getting caught at a party with alcohol. Photographs rapidly circulated through social media, ensuring that everyone knew about it. Mike McGraw believed in rules and consequences, playoffs or not. More than winning, he wanted his players to learn. But it was a tough lesson.
The Blue Devils had a deep squad and could work around missing players. McGraw moved Moe Khalid, who played midfield off the bench, to the backline. Midfielders play between the offensive forwards and the defenders, connecting the two lines. Depending on a team’s strategic formation on any given day, midfielders have to be versatile. Some lean toward defense, breaking up opponents’ attacks. Others swing between offensive and defensive roles, using good passing skills, stamina, and speed to work the ball box-to-box. Still others, the most creative and adept, are playmakers, more attack-minded. They control possession and pick out the perfect killer pass, doing less defensive work than their teammates.
Strong and with some size, Moe tended to play more defensively, but he was able to switch gears and turn strength into speed when needed.
“I can attack,” he says of his versatility. “Wherever I am, I always attack.”
Moe liked the move to defense. It suited his competitive temperament, which could be aggressive. While he’s charming and handsome, Moe’s moods swing dramatically, changing from amiable to ferocious in a flash. He has always been this way, fiercely strong-willed, sometimes abrasive, extremely independent, and very outspoken. The loyalty he shows friends, the sweet demeanor he reserves for family—especially younger brother Sharmarke—can morph into fury. He is, he admits, no stranger to trouble.
Moe grew up in Hagadera, one of five refugee camps in Dadaab, Kenya. Run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Dadaab is the world’s largest refugee camp, overcrowded and underfunded. Located in Kenya’s Garissa County, the UN estimates that some 350,000 refugees inhabit the rows of dwellings made of varying combinations of tarp, plastic, and mud. Others estimate that the population approaches half a million. If considered a city, Dadaab would be Kenya’s third largest. The hotels, shopping centers, taxis, buses, and schools are largely run by refugees, and stimulate the regional economy. According to a recent World Bank report, Dadaab generates approximately $14 million within the Kenyan economy each year. Other analysts claim the figure could be twice that.
From the air, Dadaab would resemble the tract housing found in many American suburbs. Homes are lined up on square partitions of land. Dusty, straight roads in right angles connect them. But on the ground, the view is very different. Families scramble to get water, wood, and food during daylight hours, standing in long lines for rations while keeping a watchful eye on encroaching darkness, wary of the crime that escalates once the sun goes down.
The camp was established in 1991 as a stopgap measure to house those fleeing the bloodshed that accompanied the ouster of Somali president Mohamed Siad Barre. But recently the Kenyan g
overnment has made clear that it wants out of the refugee business, claiming—accurately, it seems—that the camps harbor members of the Al-Shabaab terrorist group. In 2013, Kenyan and Somali leaders signed an agreement to begin the repatriation of Dadaab’s residents. In the wake of the Al-Shabaab attack on Garissa University College in 2015 that left 147 dead, efforts to close Dadaab gained momentum, despite the fact that the attackers were Kenyan, not Somali.
Unlike some of his teammates, who simply say “nice”—a word they use often in response to a question they don’t want to answer—when asked about growing up in a refugee camp, Moe speaks freely, vividly, about his time in Hagadera. He remembers the day the grocery store burned down. The robberies. The daily demand to get fresh water before the well shut down during Asr, the third of the five daily prayers, around four o’clock in the afternoon. He remembers his mother, Habibo Farah, a small, shy woman he describes as “the strongest person I know,” walking to different houses at night, searching for leftovers his family could have for dinner. He remembers nights with no dinner at all. His father wasn’t around much, there was little money, and hunger threatened constantly.
When he was just three years old, he saw one of his best friends digging through his own excrement to find something, anything, to eat.
Moe still has mixed emotions about leaving Kenya. Just six years old, he was excited about living in America. But his two teenage sisters, Halima and Marwa, had to stay behind because they were older, and the system didn’t recognize them as immediate family. Farah remembers being too afraid to ask questions, worried that she would lose her window to the United States. It was an agonizing decision, but the need to feed and educate her younger children won out.
Moe came to Lewiston in November 2005 via Elizabeth, New Jersey. The five months in New Jersey remain etched in his mind. He recalls neighborhood kids making fun of the way his mother talked, and hearing Farah crying at night. She couldn’t speak English and didn’t know anyone. She worried about her girls still in Africa. He remembers his first day of school, third grade, when he had to share a desk because there weren’t enough. A little girl with dark hair and tan skin called out to him, beckoning with her hands. He didn’t understand a word she said but understood she wanted him to sit with her. Relieved, he went to her desk and sat, not knowing what to do next. The girl continued to talk to him, putting her arm around him in a sort of half-hug. Terrified, Moe froze. What was she doing? It was the first of many things he didn’t understand.
But when his family arrived in Maine, they found people who understood. They settled in a ground-floor apartment just off Kennedy Park across from Country Kitchen, a giant baked goods factory. During Ramadan, the smell of baking bread that permeates the street all day makes fasting even harder than usual. In the apartment’s small kitchen, her bare feet moving quickly on the yellow linoleum floor, Farah prepares stews and fried dough for her children to eat with sambusa for ifthar, the meal that breaks the fast after sundown. A cooler of tea with milk sits on the small table in the middle of the room next to a stack of fresh malawah or sabaayad, the family’s cat eyeing everything warily.
There were occasional gaffes in Lewiston, like the time Sharmarke ordered mac and cheese at Applebee’s and didn’t know there was bacon in it. In school, cafeteria workers knew to prevent Somali kids from grabbing a slice of pepperoni pizza, but restaurants were different. Pork is haram, or forbidden, in Islam, as pigs are considered unclean. Observant Muslims do not eat or touch them. That night, Sharmarke dreamed he was turning into a pig, something big sister Safiya still laughs about.
There were other things, too. While school was tolerable, Moe soon learned that people in cars could be, in his words, “pretty racist,” often yelling, “Go back to your country!” as they drove by. His neighbor, too, an older, white veteran, seemed none too happy they were there. Moe would overhear him complaining about his family. “Those black kids are all just a bunch of thieves,” he’d say. “They benefit off the government, and they don’t work for shit.”
Moe’s mother, who finds strength in her daily readings of the Koran, didn’t care about such blather, but she worried about her son’s temper. “There’s a lot of idiots out there,” she told him, encouraging him to be strong. “Ignore them.”
For the most part, though, Lewiston was okay, especially on the soccer field. Moe found soccer in Lewiston almost immediately, playing in a small downtown field with a bunch of older kids. They created their own leagues—red, yellow, and blue—and played mini-tournaments. When he was eleven, he scored against one of the best players in the neighborhood, making his older mentors proud. They taught him to play tough, and he learned to never be intimidated.
Moe doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t play soccer. It’s his much-needed outlet, his escape. Soccer channels the anger that sometimes boils over. In Hagadera, he often skipped school to play, preferring a friendly game in the streets to the beatings he often received from teachers.
Coach McGraw knew Moe could concentrate his energy to clear the ball as well as anybody, twisting his body to get the most force he could out of a kick, leaning back and watching it sail away with precision. Moe was one of the reasons McGraw wasn’t worried about making changes to the team’s defense before the 2014 regional final against Brunswick. His guys played every day. They were as familiar with each other as with their own families. It was an essential part of their winning formula.
After a scoreless first half, McGraw encouraged Karim to shoot more, noting that Brunswick’s goalie wasn’t very tall. As always, Karim obeyed. Early in the second half, his back to the goal, he faked direction, twirled around, and rocketed the ball into the net with his left foot. Less than half a minute later, he knocked in another one. It was done: Lewiston 2, Brunswick 1. After two years of playoff catastrophes, Lewiston eradicated its anguish to become the 2014 Eastern Class A Regional Champions. For the first time since 1991, and only the second time ever, the Blue Devils headed to the state final. McGraw was ecstatic as he watched the team celebrate. But there was still one game left to play, and it was a game Lewiston had never won.
McGraw’s caution was justified. If the undefeated Blue Devils were the closest thing Maine high school soccer had to a Goliath, the Cheverus Stags were about to become their David.
Founded in 1917, Cheverus is a private co-educational Catholic school overlooking Portland’s scenic Back Cove district. The school has bucketsful of state sports titles, especially cross-country running and indoor track, but only one soccer championship, a 2–1 victory over Mt. Ararat in 2001. Going into the playoffs in 2014, Cheverus posted a dismal record in its last regular season games, 1–1–4. However, it quickly became an unlikely contender for the state title as it shocked second-seeded Falmouth in the quarters and top-ranked Scarborough in the regional final.
Why not them?
From Indiana’s Milan High School—the Hoosiers story—to the Miracle on Ice at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics in 1980, sports thrive on Cinderella stories. In 2014, Cheverus wanted to claim a glass slipper by vanquishing top-seeded Lewiston.
The Stags, especially their keeper, peaked at exactly the right time. Jacob Tomkinson was nothing short of a miracle worker in goal, warding off Lewiston’s overwhelmingly dominant advantage in shots. From the get-go, Abdi H. felt something was a little off. He tried to outshoot his nervousness in the early minutes, but hit the woodwork over and over again.
“Keep going,” he chanted. “Stay positive.”
At the half, down 1–0, Moe was worried, his handsome face crinkled as he listened to McGraw. Like Abdi H., he felt something was off, something more than nerves. It was like they had started to give up. But McGraw told them he didn’t care about the one-goal deficit; the game was going exactly as he imagined. He knew Cheverus would try to weather Lewiston’s offensive storm, squeak in a goal, and hold tight. But he was confident they would attack in the second half while the Stags held on for dear life in a defensive shell.
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But expect the unexpected, McGraw warned. It’s what he always said.
“They got one opportunity,” he remembers of that second half. “The shot deflected off one of our players and just slid into the goal, two to nothing.”
He refused to panic, but he decided it might be time to worry.
“Then we’re in a scramble,” McGraw recalls. “At that point, my kids are playing their brains out. And we’re in the box. They’ve got everybody back in the box and we’re just pounding and pounding, and finally get a goal.”
After the Blue Devils scored, they got a penalty kick because of a handball in the box. The day before, they endlessly practiced kicks, over and over, in hope of just this kind of gift. With a tie, they could ride into overtime and finish it. All Abdi H. had to do was put it in the net.
There is an almost regal quality about Abdirahman Shariff-Hassan, or Abdi H., as Coach—and most everyone else—called him, something he inherited from his father, Omar Mohamed, who’d been a religious teacher in Somalia. It was how his parents had met: his mother’s younger siblings went to his dad to learn the Koran. People still came to his father to study, gathering in the family’s Lewiston apartment for lessons.
Abdi H. has a quiet, slight presence, standing about five foot eight. He is polite, humble, and offers a timid but warm handshake that belies his strength. His beautiful face looks like someone drew him, except he is standing right there, his skin almost translucent with a tan sheen that glows around his chiseled features. His profile is distinguished, powerful, intense.
On the soccer field, Abdi H. leaves no question regarding his command of the game, his concern for his teammates, and his desire to win. His eyes are everywhere, working the field like a chess game to stay two, three, four strategic steps ahead of his opponent. He sees things no one else does. But off the field, he is soft-spoken, thoughtful. When he smiles, his mouth barely moves, the corners turning up only slightly, yet somehow consuming his entire face. It is a rare occurrence, something usually reserved for family or closest friends. But when he does smile, you feel like you’ve won something.