New book looks at 1975 Foxcroft Academy boys basketball state championship season

Event to celebrate the title launch Feb. 12 at the Center Theatre

In 1975 the Foxcroft Academy boys basketball team won the Class B championship for the only gold ball in the sport in school history. The 1974-75 season and the effect the team had on the town is the focus of the forthcoming book  “The Last One Out Of Town Turn Out The Lights” by David Albee and published by Down East Books.

Albee, a 1972 Foxcroft Academy graduate who now lives in Petaluma, California, covered every game of the 1974-75 season while working for the Piscataquis Observer. Albee’s early years as a sportswriter, general assignment reporter, and photographer in Dover-Foxcroft from December 1973 to July of 1976 launched a 35-year career as an award-winning sportswriter and columnist at five newspapers in four states from Maine to California. He covered multiple Super Bowls, World Series, NBA and NHL playoffs, World Cup soccer, NCAA football, and NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. He is an honorary member of the Baseball Writers Association of America and has voted on Baseball Hall of Fame inductions and Heisman Trophy selections.

A book launch for “The Last One Out Of Town Turn Out The Lights”, which will be released on Feb. 18, is set for 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 12 at the Center Theatre. Albee will be signing copies as well as talking part in a discussion on stage with Kevin Nelson, the Ponies’ 6-foot-8 star who went on to play at the University of Maine and is a member of the Foxcroft Academy Athletic Hall of Fame and Maine Basketball Hall of Fame, and head coach Skip Hanson, a 1962 Foxcroft Academy graduate and fellow member of both halls of fame who returned to his hometown to coach. Nearly all of the living members of the 1974-75 team plan to attend.

Admission will be $5 with proceeds going to the Thompson Free Library, or buying a copy in advance from The Briar Patch in Bangor. Books will be for sale on Feb. 12.

The idea for the book came when Albee attended his 50th Foxcroft Academy reunion in 2022. 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 turned to the 1975 title-winning team  “because they hadn’t won a state championship and haven’t won one since then in basketball,” Albee said.

“When I was covering the team for the Observer I was 19 years old and I had no clue what I was doing, I had no journalism degree, no journalism experience,” Albee said. “It was a fluke that I got the job to begin with. Back then I was just covering games and numbers and this and that and now I’m looking at it through an adult lens 50 years later I’m thinking wow there is a story there because of the Monson consolidation with SAD 68 at the time.”

Albee said the former Monson Academy had a tremendous basketball tradition, including winning the 1968 Class S championship with then 5-foot-11, fifth-grader Kevin Nelson of southeast Monson waiting with his family for the team to arrive home.

“Foxcroft never wins that state championship without him and they never get Kevin Nelson without consolidation,” Albee said as Monson Academy closed with high school and middle school students from the town attending school in Dover-Foxcroft.

He said as an adult he came to realize the difficulties his Monson classmates faced.

“The bus pickup spot was right next to the academy that was closed for them,” he said. “So every day they are being reminded that they can’t go to school at Monson Academy because the doors are locked and they have to get on the bus and ride to Dover for 20 odd miles.”

Nelson and Hanson are the two main characters in “The Last One Out Of Town Turn Out The Lights” with the coach guiding the Ponies after having never qualified for the basketball tournament during his playing days.

Albee began conducting interviews in November 2022, starting with Nelson and Hanson. “Then it went down with all the players, I talked with every single living player on that team,” he said, as he reached out to managers, assistant coaches, cheerleaders, and others. 

Foxcroft Academy rivals were included such as Tom Philbrick of Orono High School – Albee referred to Philbrick as “Foxcroft’s nemesis and Kevin Nelson’s nemesis” — and Orono’s Brian Butterfield who went on to be a longtime Major League Baseball coach. Albee spoke with Al Baran, the 6-foot-6 star for Medomak Valley High School of Waldoboro who squared off with Nelson in the 1975 Class B championship at the Augusta Civic Center (Foxcroft won 56-53).

“This is all weaving together and you talk to every player and every coach and somebody comes up with a story you hadn’t heard before and you follow that and you try to confirm it and it just took me in directions I wouldn’t have believed I would have gone,” said Albee said, about the 50-60 he interviewed people for his book.

The team helped take Albee’s life in a direction he did not foresee. 

“That basketball team changed the course of my career and changed the course of my life, because I am not here in California if not for that basketball team,” he said “I don’t become a sportswriter.”

After departing from a broadcasting school in Boston, Albee said he 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 on North Street (what is now Penquis) in 1973. There he got to know Piscataquis Observer Sports Editor Ree Miller. 

In 1973-74 Foxcroft had its best team in years and would open the season at Orono. 

“I was bagging (Miller’s) groceries and I asked her ‘Are you going to the big game on Saturday night?’ and she sort of hemmed and hawed and said ‘I don’t know that much about basketball’ and for whatever reason I turned to her said ‘Would you like me to go instead and cover the game?,” Albee said.

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.

“It was an opportunity for me to get involved in sport which is my No. 1 passion,” Albee said as the Dec. 1, 1973 game between Foxcroft and Orono was the start of a 35-year career.

For the 1974-75 season Albee covered every game the Ponies played. He said Thompson had the idea for Albee to travel with the team on the chartered bus to Augusta for the state championship.

“I can remember when we got off on the Newport exit on I-95 and turned left, that was the first group of Foxcroft fans right there on the overpass,” Albee said of the return drive. “There were already Foxcroft fans there greeting 27 miles from Dover.”

“We basically got a fire engine escort from Corinna all the way to Dover-Foxcroft,” he said, with the Dexter Fire Department setting aside the town’s high school rivalry to accompany the Pony basketball team until it reached the Piscataquis County line.

“I am on the bus when they come into town, coming down South Street, people were on both sides of the street all the way from South Street to Main Street and all the way from Main Street to Foxcroft Academy,” Albee said.

“The scene was incredible and I will never forget that, I almost felt like a member of the team, but I wasn’t,” he said.

“The impact it had on me and others like me who for years have followed Foxcroft Academy basketball and had never seen anything like this and there hasn’t been anything like this since,” Albee said.

“The further we get away from it the closer it brings us back through the memories of it, how special it was,” he said. “This team just captivated the entire community.”

Before Foxcroft traveled down Route 15 to play in the regional final at the Bangor Auditorium a sign 10 to12 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.

“Everybody I talked to all remembered that sign, so that to me kind of became the obvious title for the book,” Albee said, despite the potential difficulty in fitting all 10 words on the cover. He said everyone talked about how inspirational the sign was.

The sign, made by Neil Johnston, included a common refrain among Maine basketball fans from small towns and Albee said the next week it was by South Street with the amended words “Last One Out Put Out the Cat” in reference to the matchup with the Panthers of Medomak Valley.

Albee said he was surprised how the book reconnected him to many of the people involved. He said he had a great deal of fun sharing stories from 50 years ago and hearing new anecdotes. 

“I was just surprised about how much fun it was and how much impact it had on me in terms of turning back the clock and thinking about some pretty good things in my life,” Albee said. “I had never written a book before and now I am considering doing a couple.”

He wanted to have the book launch in Dover-Foxcroft where everything started. Albee’s father was a film projectionist at the Center Theatre and he recalled going  upstairs as a child to where his father worked. 

“So there’s a lot of full circle moments,” Albee said. “It’s so personal to me because it’s reconnected me to my town, to my friends, to my high school, to my state, and that’s been pretty special.”