One Goal

When Lewiston lost its first state championship—a 2–0 shutout by Brunswick—in 1991, Mike McGraw didn’t know when, or if, he’d get another chance. Many hoped the next year would be it, but it wasn’t. Despite scoring fifty goals—the most yet in Lewiston history—players such as Dan LeClerc, Earl St. Hilaire, and Swedish exchange student Per Kiltorp did not get back to the final. But eventually, some twenty-three years later, November 8, 2014—a year before Maulid tried to figure out how to get the ball over the heads of Scarborough’s defense—McGraw got another chance.

The 2014 Maine Class A Boys Soccer State Championship had all the hype of a Hollywood movie. As the Lewiston Sun Journal explained, the game pitted Lewiston’s fairy-tale season against the Cinderella run of Cheverus High School.

Seeded seventh entering the playoffs, Cheverus was delighted just to be at the ball, filling its Twitter feeds with the hashtag “#WhyNotUs?” as it worked through the playoff bracket. Not only were the Stags there to win, they might actually have the chops to make it happen.

Why not them?

Lewiston’s team rode into the championship game confident about the outcome. Despite some battles along the way, they had a nearly flawless record. In early October, after a hard-fought 2–1 win over Bangor, even the usually reserved McGraw admitted they could go all the way, peaking at exactly the right time, playing like a championship team. But the Blue Devils had a lot of baggage to deal with, coming up short in heartbreaking fashion year after year.

In 2012, a second-seeded Lewiston squad faced top-seeded Mt. Ararat in the regional final, the last stop before the state championship game. Even now, Lewiston Athletic Director Jason Fuller can’t talk about it without grimacing.

“Still painful,” he says.

With forty-six seconds of regulation play left on the clock, Lewiston tied Mt. Ararat 1–1. Excited Lewiston fans spilled onto the field, creating chaos and merriment despite Fuller’s best efforts to keep them in their seats. He knew the refs weren’t going to like a horde of cheering kids running over the sideline. When junior midfielder Abdullahi Shaleh ripped off his shirt, a once-popular move that FIFA outlawed in 2003, an official quickly raised a yellow card.

The call? Excessive celebration.

From the stands, Denis Wing, whose son Austin was then a freshman goalie, shook his head at the call. He wanted to be surprised that the ref had booked the kid, but knew all too well what some officials did when Lewiston was on the field. He had once played soccer for Lewiston.

Wing grew up on Chestnut Street. It’s a neighborhood where many of the Somali players now live, in the rectangular triple- and quadruple-stacked apartment houses of Lewiston’s “tree streets.” Upperclassmen at nearby Bates College are known to warn freshmen to turn back if they ever hit Walnut, Chestnut, Ash, and so on. But Wing only knew it as his old neighborhood, bristling whenever he heard someone talk badly about Lewiston’s “downtown kids,” code words for Somali. He was once a kid who lived downtown, back when the phrase described French-Canadian kids like him. From sunrise to sunset, he played next to the Colisée parking lot in Drouin Field, kicking balls through a set of rusted goalposts.

The Wings—Denis and his wife, Kathy; Austin and his younger brother, Dalton—now live in a house with a pool on the outskirts of town. Denis and Kathy liked helping out with their sons’ teams, becoming increasingly involved with soccer’s Booster Club, and were sideline fixtures on game days. Denis Wing knew soccer well. But today, he was confused. He watched as Mt. Ararat’s goalie talked to the official. After a quick back-and-forth, the goalie walked back to the box. The referee brought out a red card. Taunting.

Down on the field, McGraw stood stunned as Mt. Ararat fans cheered. Taunting? How could Abdullahi taunt fans who were on the other side of the bleachers? Taunting who, exactly?

Wing couldn’t believe it, either. The red card was bad enough, but the way it happened seemed absurd. The goalie talks to a ref, and a red card comes out? The ref was going to take the word of what the goalie said happened? If it was excessive celebration and taunting, why didn’t the red card come out in the first place?

For generations, Lewiston athletes knew all too well what other schools thought of them. Even before the Somalis started playing, before questions of racial bias threatened every time a ref pulled a card, Lewiston got a bum rap. When teams played Lewiston, McGraw says, they tended to “junk it up a little bit.” The “Dirty Lew” has long resonated throughout the state as a city filled with broken homes, cars, and people; not the stuff of tourism brochures. McGraw remembers once, long ago, when one of his players got a yellow card in a game against Westbrook. Baffled about what the player had done, McGraw asked for clarification.

“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 government 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.