PORTLAND, Maine — At the beginning of March 2020, Gary Stevens was going about his usual duties as the athletic director at Thornton Academy in Saco. It was a busy time of year. Winter sports were coming to an end, and the spring season was just getting started.
By the end of the month, the entire sports schedule was in utter disarray, not just for Thornton but for every team — high school, collegiate, and professional — in the state. Stevens and longtime WGME sports anchor Dave Eid tell the story of what unfolded in their new book, “Stolen Seasons - How Maine Sports Survived the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
At the time Eid reported on what was happening and Stevens worked through it. On the high school level, the spring sports season was canceled, although teams could still hold virtual workouts to give students something to do.
"We had reached what became known in popular parlance as 'the new normal,'" Stevens wrote in the book’s foreword. "Everything that I had been taught about school and athletic leadership was challenged and forever changed."
On the collegiate level, the NCAA canceled its postseason tournament just as the Bowdoin women’s basketball team stood on the brink of playing for a national championship. The seniors in particular felt a keen sense of loss.
"To have their career come to an end, and through no fault of their own and really abruptly," Bowdoin Athletic Director Tim Ryan recalled, "was just a really difficult thing for people to process."
Stevens and Eid have written a book that, in their words, "represents our attempt to explain how the loss of opportunities in sport — which can never be returned —spurred people on all sides of the issue to find avenues of recovery." Ultimately it’s about the Mainers involved in sports and "their at times heroic, always selfless journey towards the future."