After Tragedy, a Championship—and a Team Unlike Any Other
Lewiston High School's boys soccer team brings the city together weeks after a horrific mass shooting
Our book, Religion of Sports, is coming out December 5! In it, we show you why sports aren’t just like a religion; we tell you why they are one. And we have help from some people you might have heard from, sharing never-before-heard stories about Tom Brady, Simone Biles, Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, and many more.
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And a final housekeeping note: there will be no newsletter next week due to the holiday. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! We’ll be back soon. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
About two weeks prior, they were mourning, hiding, fearing for their lives.
Now they’re champions.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of the simple story: that sports heal, that the community of Lewiston, Maine, was broken following a horrific mass shooting but is fine now, thanks to the local high school soccer team’s state championship. Healing doesn’t work that way, though. It runs in circles, it ebbs and flows, it lingers. A win like this one helps—of course it does. It gives everyone a reason to smile. It’s a win, a literal win. But it won’t fix everything. How could it?
So, no, I’m not going to focus on healing today. Instead, I’m simply going to tell you a story about the Lewiston High School soccer team. I want to show you the power of a community, of acceptance, of taking people from different backgrounds and uniting them as one. Sports cannot do everything—but they can do that.
Lewiston, located along the Androscoggin River, is one of those textbook mill towns that you read about in history class. In the 1800s, tycoons transformed the city, tapping into that river’s power to pump out textiles that clothed the Union Army. They built a college, which became Bates, and still brings affluent students to the north part of the city. But centuries later, the mills that supported a boomtown in 1850, turned the city into a decaying mess come the 2000’s. Unemployment and poverty soared. Local high school students earned a reputation as some of the toughest—not to mention the poorest and worst performing—in the state.
The city was also, at the time, overwhelming white. But that would soon change. From 2001 to 2003, fleeing civil war and sensing opportunities available to hard workers, more than 1,000 Somali families moved to Lewiston. Overnight, the city transformed into a multiethnic society, though not everyone was thrilled. The mayor wrote a letter urging Somalis to go elsewhere—and he was eventually voted out. Slowly, Lewiston started to welcome the change.
You can help thank soccer for that.
At the high school, Somali refugees were targeted, bullied in the hallways, “Go back to Africa!” scrawled on the wall of the bathroom. Some of those students approached the soccer coach, Mike McGraw, about joining the team. Of course, he said yes, and on the pitch, he noticed that they were good, though as the reporter Amy Bass described in her indispensable 2019 book about Lewiston One Goal, “He wasn’t trying to save the world; he wanted to win.” One day, as the two factions of his team—refugees and Lewiston natives—were in the midst of a standoff, McGraw called everyone together, Remember the Titans style. “To play the game, you’re gonna have to play together,” the coach said. “It’s the only way to play.”
They won the state championship.
They won another.
And another.
Three state titles in total, before last week. The city has rallied around the refugees before, and their openness to work together has spilled out into other areas as well. “I think the two communities blending together has created a sense of community but also shows the rest of Maine what migration is about,” Fatuma Hussein, who moved to Lewiston in 2001, told News Center Maine. “I believe we saved Lewiston.”
During the recent border crisis, Latin Americans have arrived and moved into the Ramada Inn and tried to find jobs. When local news crews interviewed one teenager shortly after he arrived in Maine, he said in Spanish, “I want to play on the soccer team.”
Earlier this month, the city locked down when a gunman opened fire in a bowling alley, leaving 18 dead and 13 others injured, the deadliest mass shooting in the state’s history. The National Guard landed four helicopters on the high school’s soccer field. But slowly, as the community emerged in a haze, the high schoolers started practicing again, on a small open corner of the field. They were in the midst of a deep playoff run; as they chased a championship, they rallied around a new slogan, something the team repeated at every opportunity: Do it for the city.
The Lewiston Blue Devils made it to the state finals, a game that went into overtime tied at 2-2. With 1 minute left in OT, Tegra Mbele kicked a ball that found the back of the net. Mbele’s family immigrated from Africa and gave him a perfect name for the sport—and for the moment: Mbele is the Swahlili word for ‘forward.’
He was mobbed by teammates. Reporters shoved microphones in his face. A teammate had to translate for him. “It brings me joy to score in a final like this,” he said.
Dan Gish, the team’s coach, described the win as “euphoric.” He told NPR, “We've got guys from Angola, Somalia, Kenya, and French-Canadian kids are playing, and we show the world how you should get along. It doesn't matter where you're from on this team, as long as you do it for each other and you're a good person.”
Students celebrated with their classmates on the field. Locals made the trip to watch the game, excited just to find an excuse to cheer. Healing? Not everything. But this game showed the best of us. It showed a better vision for the future. It gave a slight glimmer of hope.
Sometimes, that’s enough.
🏆 Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim, subjects of our podcast Roughhousing, are NWSL champions! What an incredible chapter to add to their stories!
👏 Almost two years ago, USC women’s basketball player Aaliyah Gayles was shot 18 times at a house party. This week, she finally returned to the court. Goosebumps.
🤔 Sports are religion—with cathedrals, holy wars, hymns, and all the rest. Yes, even rituals…such as this one, which I’d never heard of before: Patrick Mahomes has a pair of lucky underwear.
🎾 Naomi Osaka has returned to tennis in her first matches since giving birth. She recently participated in our latest collaboration with Nike! Congrats to Naomi!
🤠 “Coach Prime” gets the New Yorker treatment.
📣 The Washingtonian put together a fascinating look at the Washington Football Team’s first Black cheerleaders.
