by Amy Bass
A girl dressed in a cheerful pink-and-red hijab, a jilbab grazing her toes, crumples up a piece of paper as she enters and throws it into the trashcan.
“I’m a baller!” she says with delight. Everyone laughs, and she snatches a tan Ralph Lauren baseball hat off a classmate and puts it atop her hijab.
“No hats,” says McGraw, laughing, and everyone giggles as she takes it off.
McGraw launches into the day’s lesson, Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“I am just gonna put the information out there,” he tells them. “You believe what you want to believe.”
He reviews Darwin’s work but leaves room for their own perspectives, religious or otherwise. His respect, awe even, for Darwin is evident. He loves this stuff, revels in it. He hands out the assignment, patiently explaining its details and his expectations. They need to choose an animal, he says, and change its environment, writing about how it adapts to new surroundings. He talks about natural selection, the survival of the fittest, and the importance of coexistence among different animals.
“With changing environments, the ones that are gonna survive are the ones that will adapt,” he says. He looks at them, taking off the reading glasses he needs to see his notes. “Life finds a way.”
It’s no giant stretch to see how the Darwin lesson translates to Lewiston. McGraw is asking students to think about what it means to suddenly live somewhere completely different. Every student in the room understands this. They either live in a new environment themselves or their environment has rapidly changed.
McGraw’s ideas about natural selection are also deeply embedded in his coaching philosophies. Players on the bench, he says, are what keep the starters sharp. Keep developing your skills, he tells starters, because if you don’t, the guys on the bench will.
“You work haaard!” he constantly threatens during practice, trying to motivate a kid to run a little faster or try for the ball more aggressively. “Or someone else will instead of you!”
But it goes beyond survival of the fittest.
“For McGraw, it’s always about respect for the whole team,” says Eric Wagner, who acknowledges that much of his own coaching philosophy stems from his old coach’s approach. “The one thing that I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to get closer to him in is the way he treats people with complete respect at all times—I wish I had that.”
McGraw’s admiration for the bench has served him especially well in recent years, when there has been an increased disconnect between the parents who are able to come to support the team and the players actually on the field.
“I am lucky that nobody complains about playing time; about the other, ugly aspects of coaching,” he admits, knowing well the tales of parents demanding field time for their kids. “I’m lucky I’ve got the people I have.”
Fuller is a bit more blunt.
“The white kids’ parents are there, even if their kids aren’t playing,” he says matter-of-factly. “Never a problem.”
For a long time, the Blue Devils’ bench was not that deep. If a kid went out for soccer, he didn’t have to be all that skilled to make varsity. As McGraw began to see how the demographic changes at the high school could impact the soccer team, he wondered how it was all going to work, especially considering the skepticism, the fear, the worry, and the racial tension that still churned throughout the city. Indeed, he had to rethink some of the assumptions he himself had made.
Gus LeBlanc says that McGraw was the perfect person at the right moment. He has a big heart, likes kids, and has a lot of credibility with people locally. People trusted him to be fair. If these new kids were going to become dominant on a team, there was no better person to steer the process.
McGraw remembers the first time he really got a glimpse of not only the future of the soccer team but the future of Lewiston. A few Somali kids showed up to watch a summer game one evening. The rest was history.
“Yeah, we play soccer all the time,” one said to him.
“You do?” McGraw asked.
“Yeah,” he answered. “We want to play.”
“Good,” McGraw said. “You need to fill out some forms, get a physical, and there’s a fee, and then…”
“Okay, no problem—when do we get our uniforms?”
McGraw laughed. “You have to try out in the fall.”
“Oh, no,” one answered. “We’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna be good, we’re gonna make a champion.”
McGraw chuckled. “You need to try out,” he told them.
A few years later, Shobow was one of the players who did just that. Dan Gish remembers well the hot August day in 2007 when Shobow showed up for tryouts. The soon-to-be high school freshman didn’t look like much, wiry and diminutive, but within minutes of warming up, he rainbowed the ball over the head of another and into the goal.
The rainbow, or rainbow flick, is a rare skill in soccer, almost never seen on a high school field. A flashy offensive move intended to move the ball over a defender, a player has to scoot the ball up his leg before kicking it overhead with the opposite heel. The ball arcs over the defender, where the player can run to kick it into the net. It requires precise timing, skilled footwork, and speed.
Stunned, Gish took in Shobow’s move before looking over at McGraw. What the heck just happened? Gish had never imagined he’d ever see anything like that in Lewiston, but it was the kind of soccer he was hoping to coach.
Born at Andrews Air Force Base, Gish moved to Limestone, Maine, when he was in first grade, after his father was transferred to Loring. Gish has been in Maine so long that he considers himself a native, although he knows well the Maine saying, “You’re always from away.” Growing up on the base, he had an atypical Maine experience, with friends from all over—Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Mexico. He remembers an article about his high school’s girls’ basketball team, “Eagles flew in from all around the world,” noting the base made the tiny town a “mini melting pot.” He was well versed in the machinations of a diverse student body; he just didn’t expect Lewiston to have one.
Gish played soccer at the University of Maine at Farmington, where he studied exercise physiology and roomed with Shawn Chabot, who would eventually succeed Gus LeBlanc as principal at Lewiston High School and become Gish’s boss. After working for a few years, Gish decided to become a teacher. It was a natural fit for Gish, who has an intense sense of empathy when it comes to kids. Belying his bulked-up physique, his voice is earnest, almost pleading, his wide-open eyes probing kids for what they need.
Need cleats? See Coach Gish. Need help icing a sore knee? See Coach Gish.
At Gardiner High School, his first teaching job, he was also the head coach for girls’ soccer. When a position opened in Lewiston in 2000, he took it. He had no intention of coaching, but when asked, he joined McGraw.
Gish coached a different kind of soccer than McGraw, and as players like Shobow started to drift onto the team, he saw the potential to make some changes. These kids weren’t using soccer to get into shape for hockey or basketball. They played soccer to win and had a menu of skills to prove it. For a long time, Lewiston was a city where soccer played bridesmaid to football every autumn and completely disappeared once the snow started to fall and all eyes turned to sticks and pucks. But these kids were different.
Gish wanted to capitalize on the speed and deft ball-handling abilities of the new players, focusing on control and possession rather than the direct game that Lewiston had played for years. It was the kind of soccer he’d played in college and the way he thought the game should be played.
Direct soccer, better known as “kick and chase,” is about moving the ball forward at all costs, mostly via long, vertical passes, and then chasing it down to kick it again. Goal kicks are punted long, and throw-ins are directed down the line for distance. McGraw’s teams won a lot of games with that style for a long time, using size and strength to get the ball into the net.
Conversely, possession
soccer sends the ball in multiple directions, with passes going every which way among a variety of players, side to side. It is a more patient, nuanced game, using numerous angles to expand the field of play to the outside lines. Goalies often throw, rather than punt, in order to build action from the back, or use short passes just as any field player would. Sideline throw-ins focus on possession, rather than distance, sometimes going shorter distances across the field, rather than heading toward the goal at all costs. Possession soccer favors speed, sophisticated ball handling, and a vast technical knowledge of the field and the players on it. Rather than one player moving the ball toward the goal, it relies on multiple switches among a variety of players in the same possession. When done well, the possession game leaves less time and opportunity for the opposition to attack.
“I’m not a kickball coach,” Gish told McGraw. He understood that there were moments in any game when a direct style could be exploited, but he felt strongly that Lewiston should play a possession game. This wasn’t anyone’s grandfather’s team: the new guys were fast, skilled, and had good control of the ball.
But McGraw had been doing things his way for more than twenty years when Gish arrived, and while he had never won a state championship, his record was strong, including the 1991 shot at the state title. But Gish found it frustrating to use a decades-old championship game as reason to continue doing things the same way. He thought he could make an impact, but McGraw had to let him in. AD Fuller understood this and intervened, calling a meeting to figure out how the team should navigate going forward.
“I give Mike a lot of credit,” Fuller says about the changes that took place after the meeting, particularly how well McGraw listened to Gish’s ideas. “He’s evolved as a person and as a coach. After twenty-something years, to say, ‘I’ve got to change how I do things’—that’s a credit to him as a person.”
Fuller knew that, as head coach, McGraw could have taken a “my way or the highway” attitude. But he didn’t.
“Mike took some comments Dan made, and myself, and really handled it well,” remembers Fuller. “It was a struggle, but Mike is a learner, going to every conference he can and taking in what he can.”
It wasn’t always easy.
“Oh, we’ve had dialogue,” says Gish with a laugh, thinking about his relationship with McGraw. His admiration is evident in every word he says about him. “But the great thing about Coach is that he’ll listen to you. We might not always agree on everything, but we know how to make it work.” And it wasn’t just about Shobow. Ali Hersi arrived at Lewiston Middle School too late to play but, like Shobow, made varsity his freshman year alongside his older brother, Abdijabar. These players brought serious skills to the team, with the potential to bring a different future to the Blue Devils. Kick-and-run soccer was quickly becoming a thing of the past.
But playing style wasn’t the only thing that had to change. Just as the schools created support systems to help immigrant students, McGraw, too, realized that there were special challenges in bringing the team together. He used what he called “the advantage of the ball.”
Soccer lends itself to a particular kind of teamwork. It is a game of continuity, with more flow than ruptures. It doesn’t reorganize after a whistle, like basketball, or have a to-do list like the innings of a baseball game. To score in soccer, a team has to move the ball through an enormous amount of space, making decisions about who will take it where, from the first touch until someone sends it hurtling toward the net. Just by doing what a soccer team was supposed to do, the Blue Devils could become an example to the community.
Ronda Fournier, an assistant principal at Montello, often heard McGraw talk about “the ball” as she watched him adapt to change. An unapologetic “girl from the backwoods,” Fournier grew up in Sabattus, a small town just a stone’s throw from Lewiston, and attended Oak Hill High School, where football reigns supreme. A three-sport athlete herself—field hockey, basketball, and softball—she studied education at the University of New England and eventually landed in the biology classroom next to McGraw.
“He’s a really special man,” she says, smiling, a heavy Maine accent soaking every word. “You know? We are all blessed to have him as a part of our lives.”
Over the years, she got to know a lot of soccer players. If McGraw stepped out for a moment, they knocked on her door instead.
“Mrs. Fournier, you gonna let us in so we can put away our soccer gear?” they’d ask. “Yep, no problem,” she’d answer. “I’ll put it in for ya.”
Over the course of ten years, she and the coach developed a close working relationship. Few people had a better view to see how McGraw developed his winning formula.
“I remember him telling me of how difficult it was in the beginning, but it was all about the soccer.”
By prioritizing the game, she says, McGraw could make sure “the other stuff just didn’t interfere.” They didn’t have to have conversations about where a player was from, or what religion he practiced, or what language he spoke, or what his family had been through. Instead, they could focus on what a kid could do on the pitch.
McGraw, the players still joke, doesn’t care where they’re from as long as they pass the ball. “I watched Mike in the classroom for years. I see him out on the coaching field, and he does the same thing,” says Fournier. “He takes a kid’s strength, and he helps that kid use their strengths to overcome their weaknesses. He shows how they’re related, so that a kid can capitalize.”
Fournier pauses. “Any kid,” she says, and then waits another moment before repeating it, with emphasis. “Any. Kid.”
Fournier knows well the challenges of teaching here, but she doesn’t see the Somali influx as anything other than Lewiston being Lewiston. The newest immigrants have needs, just like those who came before them, and it is the schools’ job to meet them.
“It started with the French-Canadians, right?” she says.
Her own grandmother came from Canada, her grandfather from Scotland. They worked full-time shifts at the Rubber Heel, a long-gone shoe manufacturing plant in Sabattus, while growing cucumbers for the Litchfield pickle plant as a side job.
“You know, Lewiston’s gonna be kind of rough,” she remembers people saying when she first considered the job in 2005. “Things are going to be different—you sure you want to go teach there?”
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it matters where the kids come from,” she told them, shrugging off the comments. “They all need the same thing.”
She knew what people were too polite to come right out and say. Lewiston kids, among the poorest in the state, were considered problematic well before the Somalis came. But now, according to rumors, things were worse. Kids praying in the hallway, speaking different languages, dressing in “weird” clothes, eating “strange” foods. But Fournier didn’t care what anyone thought they knew about Lewiston High School. Teaching was teaching.
“To me, it didn’t matter at all,” she says. “Kids need love, they all need to know that somebody cares about them. And now they all want to play soccer.”
Fournier relied on McGraw for advice to help his players in her classes. He used the same strategies in the classroom he did on the field, emphasizing teamwork, urging her to call on a struggling student’s classmates to help. There was no question McGraw knew what was best for the players, academically, on the field, or just walking down the hallway.
But McGraw, too, faced challenges. Names no longer rolled off his tongue, and at times he resorted to calling players by their numbers until he became more familiar with pronunciations. The high school yearbook showed just how rapidly surnames in Lewiston were changing; the “A” section of class photos grew quickly because of Somali surnames. In the early days, aside from class photos, the soccer pages were the only place Somali students appeared. They weren’t photographed at prom. There were no casual photographs of them hanging in hallways or jumping around during Spirit Week. No one paid to put their baby
picture in the back pages because such photos didn’t exist; if they did, there was no money for such things.
But on the soccer field, Somali students started to lay claim, quickly becoming the majority of the varsity roster. As McGraw strategized his so-called advantage of the ball to integrate the team, he also helped incorporate the new students into the culture of the high school. He didn’t think twice about it—the game came first, and trust worked both ways. He knew that when those first Somali students came to talk to him about playing, some level of trust was established. But he had to make it grow.
McGraw knew that whatever happened on the field—teamwork, communication, patience, and persistence—could impact the community as a whole. But it was going to take some serious coaching, and not just in terms of scoring goals. There’d been animosity and growing pains—all of his players had stories. Hallway skirmishes. Standoffs in the cafeteria. “Go Back to Africa,” among other things, scrawled on bathroom walls or in the dirt on car windows. White kids telling Somali kids that they paid for their shoes, their food, and their apartments. Fights in the parking lot. Teachers who showed Black Hawk Down in class or reminded students that their behavior wasn’t acceptable “in this country.” McGraw knew he had to do more than yell “together” from the sideline. Moving together, winning together, wasn’t going to solve the world’s problems. But it was a first step. What, he wondered, was the next step?
Shobow remembers it well. It happened on a hot day in the early fall of his freshman year. McGraw saw the players getting ready as he approached the practice field. He watched them pulling up their long socks, strapping on shin guards, and huddled over cleats, trying to get knots out of tangled laces. They weren’t together, he realized, and there was a pattern. The Somali kids, Shobow included, sat in the shade by the garage, leaning against the cool bricks. The white kids were over in the sun, sitting around the light pole. Both groups were talking, separately. Both groups were getting ready, separately.