BY STEVE SOLLOWAY | PORTLAND Wil Smith walked to the intersection of Baxter Boulevard and Preble Street Extension in Portland and waited. It was a late Sunday afternoon in early October.
“You saw me? You were there?”
Smith ducked his head. He seemed a little embarrassed. He had come to that spot in Portland to watch the finish of the Maine Marathon and support a friend. She was with the Maine National Guard contingent that marched 26.2 miles to honor fallen comrades.
As Smith waited for the marchers, he watched the runners go by. The ones who were more than four hours behind the winners and still had about another 150 yards to run.
His throat tightened. “That was one of the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had,” said Smith. “The crowd is gone, the media is gone and they’re still running. I was so proud for them.”
He saw pain and fatigue. He saw runners who were older or less fit, but no less determined. He asked himself why they wouldn’t quit even though he already knew the answer.
“Next year I think I’ll bring my girls to the finish. They’ll see what I saw. I think they’ll feel the same way I did.”
His girls? Smith is the first-year head coach of the McAuley High girls’ basketball team, the new Western Maine champ. McAuley beat Sanford, the defending champion, 63-52 on Saturday. The McAuley girls stormed the court at the Cumberland County Civic Center when the horn sounded the end.
At the team bench, Smith clenched both fists in front of his bowed head and then congratulated his staff. He walked to McAuley’s student cheering section and embraced his daughter, Olivia.
You had to know his past to understand how satisfying this was.
He’s the youngest of 10, raised by his mother in a tough part of Jacksonville, Fla. A judge urged him to save his life by joining the military. Smith did, enlisting in the Navy. He served in the Balkans. Later he was based at the Brunswick Naval Air Station.
He saw a notice for a volunteer middle-school football coach, applied and got the job. A daughter arrived but her mother left. Smith got full custody of a toddler at about the same time he was accepted by Bowdoin College, which, apparently, had not accepted a single father before.
He nearly ran out of money, couldn’t buy books and didn’t eat so his daughter could. He nearly flunked out but found angels when he thought none existed. He played basketball for Tim Gilbride and was recruited to work as a counselor at the Seeds of Peace Camp in Otisfield by Tim Wilson.
“I don’t go after counselors, they come to me,” said Wilson, who was at Saturday’s game. “I had met Wil and the more I got to know him, the more I wanted him.” Why? Because Wil Smith has the gift of talking to people so they listen and buy what he’s saying. The teenagers at Seeds of Peace bought in because he talked to them, not at them.
Before Smith graduated in 2000, he won a Bowdoin community service award. Now the award bears his name. He’s also an assistant dean of student affairs, a director of the school’s multicultural student programs. He’s a University of Southern Maine law student this year and also guardian to a young relative from Florida who enrolled at Portland High.
And this is the strictly condensed version of Smith’s 38 years.
He knows the definition of quit. He identifies with those who come to that crossroad and must decide. Do they go on or do they step aside?
Smith was Liz Rickett’s junior varsity coach at McAuley. The good cop to her bad cop. There was an adjustment when he succeeded her.
“I had to become the bad cop and the girls couldn’t understand at first,” said Smith. “There has to be a healthy tension to grow. I really believe that. (But) it hurts me to hurt them. It took them a while to buy into my philosophy.” Which is to work hard. Be honest. Understand that the success of the team reflects back on the individual.
“After each practice and before each game, I tell them I love them,” said Smith. “And I do.” Smith is supposed to take his Maine bar exams in a few weeks. With McAuley playing Cony for the state championship next week, he thinks he’ll pass. The date, that is.
“The exam can wait. It’s given again in July. Right now I have to give my girls my full attention. “I won’t cheat them.”