Tipoff for Foxcroft Academy championship basketball book launch

DOVER-FOXCROFT — The 1975 Class B championship Foxcroft Academy basketball team star Kevin Nelson and head coach Skip Hanson joined author David Albee at the Center Theatre for a book launch on Feb. 12 to share memories of the team that captured the only basketball gold ball in school history.

The team’s championship is chronicled in Albee’s new book, “The Last One Out Of Town Turn Out The Lights.”

Before an audience of about 110 who purchased around 100 books, Foxcroft Academy Director of External Affairs Toby Nelson — the nephew of Kevin Nelson — said the evening was an opportunity to relive history. 

“I feel like I was there at the Augusta Civic Center on Feb. 28, 1975, when Foxcroft beat Medomak Valley 56-53,” Toby Nelson said, saying the victory came two years before he was born.

Sitting with Toby and Kevin Nelson and Hanson on the theatre stage, Albee said the 1974-75 team is very personal to him. Albee graduated from Foxcroft Academy in 1972 — today he lives in Petaluma, California— and only a few years after he covered every game for the Piscataquis Observer.

The idea for the book came when Albee attended his 50th Foxcroft Academy reunion. That weekend, Albee’s classmate Duane “Dewey” Warren learned he would be inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame and Warren asked Albee to write a short biography for the ceremony program. 

Warren asked Albee why he had never written a book. Having reconnected in Dover-Foxcroft, the pair talked often over several weeks and Warren suggested Albee write something about their hometown and/or alma mater. Talk soon turned to the 1975 title-winning team.

“I was 19, 20 years old and I was wide-eyed and didn’t know anything about what I’m doing,” Albee said. “I’m just winging it there, but through my career as a writer, a reporter and a columnist, you get a different lens as an adult to see everything and I missed so many things on what happened with that championship and that’s basically what that book became.”

“For David to chronicle this with the passion that he has just meant a great deal to me and I am sure it meant a great deal to my teammates as well,” Nelson said.

“The memories are still there even though it’s been a while,” Hanson said.

The book starts with a chapter on Monson Academy and the consolidation into Foxcroft Academy in the late 1960s, Toby Nelson said.

This is the saddest chapter, Albee said, as he writes about a then fifth-grade Kevin Nelson witnessing the Monson Academy boys winning the 1968 Class S championship. “He’s thinking at that time that he’s going to play at Monson Academy and win multiple state championships, ” Albee said, with the Slaters playing just one more season before the school shuttered.

“There was immense civic pride toward that team and it was devastating toward that town,” Albee said, as the audience got to hear the end of the radio broadcast of the 1968 championship. “In all those difficult times and sad stories I found a lot of great stories.”

“It did change and we just moved on,” Nelson said, as his championship dreams would end up being with a different team.

A 1962 Foxcroft Academy graduate, Hanson came back to coach and teach at his alma mater. 

“I was very proud to go back to Foxcroft and coach,” he said. “The first time I saw Kevin Nelson I said I was more than very glad.”

Nelson never took credit for his and the Ponies’ success, Hanson said, always deferring to his teammates and coaches.

Hanson himself did not appear in a tournament game at the Bangor Auditorium during his playing days amidst a more than decade-long drought, Albee said. 

“It’s a tough, tough thing to come in and coach in your hometown,” Albee said. “You know players and their parents and that’s a really difficult thing to come into but Skip had a plan and he stuck to the plan. Eventually you see them rise up from eighth seed to seventh seed then to fourth seed so he was making progress and obviously Kevin came in as a freshman and started four years.”

Nelson said he had the choice between varsity or the freshman team. 

“What was special about that was that roster that we had,” he said, praising senior captains Jere White and Warren. “I was never made to feel that I was a freshman on that team.”

In Nelson’s first season, Foxcroft went to Bangor as the No. 7 seed and lost to Schenck High School of East Millinocket in quarterfinal play. In 1972-73, the Ponies’ 13-5 record was the program’s best in many years. The team reached the semifinals and again lost to Schenck.

“Things were starting to get exciting around here,” Albee said about the anticipation for 1973-74.

Those Ponies helped take Albee’s life in a direction he did not foresee. His time as a sportswriter, general assignment reporter and photographer in Dover-Foxcroft from December 1973 to July 1976 launched a career as an award-winning sportswriter and columnist at five newspapers in four states from Maine to California.

After departing from a broadcasting school in Boston, Albee realized his Maine accent would be a hindrance to a career in broadcasting. He came home and took a job at the A&P grocery store in 1973. There he got to know Piscataquis Observer Sports Editor Ree Miller. 

The Ponies opened the season on a Saturday night at Orono High School and while bagging Miller’s groceries, Albee asked if she would cover the big game between Foxcroft and the defending Class B champion. The sports editor admitted she did not know much about basketball.

“Thank God the words, ‘Would you like me to go to the game?’ came out of my mouth,” Albee said. “That’s how my 35-year sports writing career started.”

He went to the contest, wrote the story longhand on Sunday, turned it on on Monday, and on Tuesday Editor/Publisher Jim Thompson called and offered him a full-time job.

The host Red Riots won but Foxcroft got revenge on the team’s home court, snapping a winning streak of over 30 games before well more than 1,000 spectators packed into the gym.

“This was a big moment in Foxcroft Academy basketball, they finally got over Orono,” Albee said, believing the Red Riots had won about 34 of the previous 35 meetings.

The number of people there was the most impressive statistic to the team, Nelson said. 

“The game was tight the whole way after we clawed our way back and it was something I would never forget,” he said.

The two teams met for a third time in the regional final, with Orono prevailing 54-52.

After the tough loss “everything came together, everything hit on every cylinder” for 1974-75, Albee said. He said “the old classic cliche team effort” was true.

The team knew it would be good, Nelson said, made up of “a group of fearless, athletic competitors.”

Hanson again mentioned how Nelson deferred credit to other players. “He always said, ‘you’re right coach,’” Hanson said. “Kevin never made sure he never rose above anybody else.”

After an 18-0 regular season, Foxcroft defeated Limestone Community High School in the quarterfinal round 65-55. The Ponies defeated Van Buren District High School 74-33 in a semifinal.

Despite being the fourth seed, Orono returned to the regional final where a third meeting with Foxcroft loomed. The Ponies won 73-49.

Fifty years ago, the postgame taking down of the nets was not organized as it is today, Nelson said. “Someone handed you a knife and you got put on people’s shoulders to get the nets down, ” he said. “That’s how it was back in those days.”

In the Class B championship, Foxcroft played fellow unbeaten Medomak Valley High School of Waldoboro.

“It was the only two undefeated teams left in the state at that point and they ended up playing each other at the Augusta Civic Center,” Albee said. “You have to remember at this time there’s no YouTube, there’s no live streaming of games, you don’t know anything about the opponents, and the only thing that Foxcroft knew about Medomak was what they saw in boxscores and what they saw on a roster.”

The Panthers were led by 6-foot-6 Al Barron and averaged more than 90 points a game in the era before the 3-point shot. “It was this mythical giant out there that Foxcroft tried to slay and boy were they incredibly impressive,” Albee said.

The genius of Hanson’s coaching is not only X’s and O’s, Nelson said, but Hanson was very sharp in his practice and game preparation and had a great ability to communicate with players. 

“He knew which buttons to push individually with players and which buttons on the team to get us to play the best that we could,” Nelson said.

He said the team knew Hanson would have them prepared, such as working on ball control, as the Ponies would not be able to run with Medomak Valley. 

“The magic of what we did and the magnitude of what we did in our universe we lived in, it can’t be measured without what Medomak did as well,” Nelson said. “The team that they had with [Barron] and his teammates, it created this perfect matchup.”

“We certainly had to do something to counter their offensive firepower, I think we went into practice that week well prepared,” he said. “Skip had us well prepared and we just had to execute.”

When the footage of the championship win concluded, the Center Theatre audience cheered as many of them had done in late February of 1975.

Albee remembers the Foxcroft Academy band from that day, he said.

The band played “The Horse” by Cliff Nobles during games as fans clapped along. In Augusta, thousands clapped along in “an incredible show of support,” Albee said.

The band had to be among the best in the state, Nelson said. 

“If you didn’t get stirred by that version of the National Anthem you were asleep or you had earplugs in,” he said. “By the time they finished you were just ready to go.”

“It was a terrific group of young men,” Hanson said of the basketball team. “They would come to practice every night ready to go and be disappointed when practice was over. They worked hard, they knew what they had in their sights, maybe a championship, but they knew they had to work very diligently for that.”

Albee spoke with 50-60 people for his book and nearly every conversation recalled a sign leading out of town to Bangor, that was adjusted slightly for the state championship. A sign 10 to 12 feet wide and 6 feet tall was placed by the Bear Hill Road with the words that decades later would become the title of Albee’s book.

The sign made by Neil Johnston included a common refrain among Maine basketball fans from small towns. Prior to the state championship, it was by South Street with the amended words “Last One Out Put Out the Cat.”

“Everyone remembers that sign and it encapsulates the spirit of this community and almost the obsession with this team,” Albee said.

The author said Hanson had to make many gut wrenching decisions. “It seemed that every time Skip made a decision it worked out right,” Albee said. He said people should remember the conviction and courage Hanson had and how these contributed to bringing home a gold ball.

“Everbody I talked to had a story and that led to another story,” Albee said. He emphasized, “It’s not my book, it’s our book because everybody shared their memories.” 

A video of the presentation is available on the Center Theatre YouTube page.