The World Cup ends this weekend, closing the book on a New England football fairy tale filled with Scots, towering Norwegians and a stealthily rebranded Gillette Stadium. But a few hours north, one Maine town has been prioritizing soccer for years, not just as a sport, but as a means of cultural exchange: Lewiston, home to thousands of Somali residents.
“I think, with immigration history in the United States, we talk a lot about this concept of the ‘melting pot,’ which is a little bit problematic, because it means everyone’s sort of losing their identity to form a new one,” said Amy Bass, author of 2018’s “One Goal: A Coach, a Team, and the Game That Brought a Divided Town Together.”
“And this is really a story of integration and negotiation with this massive, massive influx that changed the demographics of this city so quickly,” she said.
Before Lewiston High School’s boys soccer team made history, the school was known primarily for its excellent hockey program, and the town was known as a former textile center in sharp economic decline. It was only in the early 2000s, after an overflow of Somali refugees arrived in Lewiston, that word began to spread about its low crime rates and well-respected education system. Soon, more and more Somali families arrived over the next decade, and Bass said this “hockey town” began to make room for soccer — a sport played by many of the Somali children in refugee camps, due to the ease of making a ball “out of just about anything.”
While Somali families continue to face racial tension in a primarily white state, some, like the Hersis, now belong to a new class of “soccer royalty.”
Abdijabar Hersi rose from Lewiston High star to assistant coach, while his brother Abdibaari now coaches rival squad Edward Little. Just last year, Khalid Hersi became the first Lewiston High alum to join Maine’s professional soccer club, the Portland Hearts of Pine.
“[Khalid] was the pesky little brother with a ball at his feet in the living room when I was writing [and researching] the book, because I spent a lot of time with the Hersis,” Bass said. “One of the differences about being in a Hersi household versus another household is you can play ball in the house. You’re supposed to.”
According to Lewiston High head coach Dan Gish, this explosive growth in the school’s soccer program, coupled with World Cup fever, has made kids “soccer crazy from the tip of Maine to the bottom of it.” Gish was an assistant to legendary coach Mike McGraw when the team won their first state championship in 2015; 11 years and two championships later, his entire coaching staff is composed of alums, and the squad’s cultural demographic is far wider than just Somali and white.
“Now we have Congolese [and] Angolan kids, so the mix has changed,” Gish said. “And it’s pretty cool. It’s awesome. I tell them, ‘It doesn’t matter where you’re from, you know… We all have the same message, right?’”
“I think our current moment [in the United States] is a constant reminder as to why the story in Lewiston is so important,” Bass said. “Because conversations that we were having about these kids — about this team — almost ten years ago, they’ve become perhaps even more urgent.”
Guests
- Amy Bass, author of “One Goal: A Coach, a Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together,” chair of the division of social science and communication and professor of sport studies at Manhattanville College.
- Dan Gish, health and physical education teacher and head coach of the Lewiston High School boys soccer team.
