Book by award-winning sportswriter Dave Albee coming February 2025
Foreword by Maine basketball legend Skip Chappelle
About The Book
The Behind-The-Scenes Story
One small town’s loss is another small town’s gain.
“The Last One Out Of Town Turn Out The Lights” is a nostalgic, inspiring, and untold story of how a soul-crushing school district consolidation changes the fate and fortunes of two rural Maine high schools. The school merger connects a tall, humble, whimsically-talented player to a young, driven, witty coach 20 miles away to ultimately build an unlikely undefeated state championship basketball team in 1975 that “is like this meteor in Dover-Foxcroft that comes through this one season.” The extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime team captivates a hopeful community, whose spirit is symbolized in one amusing, unforgettable plywood sign on the outskirts of town.
Through a turbulent time in America, this book examines the impact of a high school basketball team on two rival schools in Piscataquis County — Monson Academy and Foxcroft Academy — and their townspeople by following the lives of Kevin Nelson and Skip Hanson after Monson Academy closes its doors. That one controversial decision allows Foxcroft Academy to finally establish a winning basketball tradition. On February 28, 1975 A.D. or perhaps B.C. (Before Cooper), FA claims its one and only Gold Ball, emblematic of the Maine High School Basketball Championship. Bitter feelings and personal struggles are revealed as are stories of admiration and light-hearted moments such as a player slipping and sliding off a court and under a fire truck, a band director being hired from a strip tease club, and a title team showering in lounge chairs.
In a period void of cellphones, lap top computers, social media, and Jake from State Farm, the book weaves unpopular decisions to cut popular players from the team, fights with hated rivals, and a phantom foul that for God’s sake should never have been called. It all leads to the kind of championship season that all small towns, coaches, players, and fans across the country covet, embrace, and treasure for a lifetime, especially in Maine where high school basketball brightens long, dreary winters.
For Monson, it’s about what if.
For Dover-Foxcroft, it’s about why not us.
For Kevin Nelson and Skip Hanson, it’s about life and legacy.
Quotes And Notes
School district consolations in the 1960s changed the landscape of small town high school basketball in Maine including Monson. According to the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame, of the 36 small town schools during that period, only six exist today.
“I realized it would have been extremely tough to continue at Monson Academy, but we had much industry back in the day between the slate quarry and the Moosehead mill. We were so dependent on tax dollars, but you kill a town when you send the school down the road.”
– Monson Academy star Buddy Leavitt.
“I knew the consolidation was inevitable. What can I do about it? Then I started thinking instead of having five girls in my class I’d probably have about 50 at Foxcroft. That was a bonus. Unfortunately, some of the kids from Monson came in with an attitude that they didn’t have to get along. They were just going to put up with what happened.”
– Steve Bray, who played on the 1968 Monson state championship team and at Foxcroft Academy.
“I remember Foxcroft as being athletic as hell, but it was a football town. Basketball-wise they were always competitive, but we didn’t have any other options like playing football in places like Milo, Brownville, and Monson. So we grew up with a driveway, a basketball, and a hoop.”
– Milo basketball star and future Executive Director of Maine Basketball Hall of Fame Tony Hamlin
“I knew that Kevin Nelson was going to be better than anything that Foxcroft had ever seen. When we went up there for a scrimmage, I told Skip `Kevin is better than what you have right now.’ ”
– Dover Grammar coach Gary Larson
“The real dynasty at FA was the FA Band.”
– Steve Lamontagne who rejoined the band’s percussion section after he was cut from varsity basketball team.
“We were gargling a bar of soap, chewing it. It was a little late for that at that time. It really affected us adversely. I joined the Air Force before I graduated from high school just to get out of Dover. The Saunders name was tarnished. My parents were upset. They were really big on public perception. I got the hell out of Dodge.”
– Dismissed Foxcroft co-captain Steve Saunders
“I started going to the Foxcroft gym in 1970 and it was all about the band and seeing and hearing them. We weren’t really worried about their basketball team back then. The FA band was really cranking this time.”
– Orono High School star Tom Philbrick
“Those three years those were unbelievable matchups, unbelievable intensity. The crowds. The passion. The fights. Just tight games. Key plays. It meant so much to both towns. I do remember the passion, the noise, and excitement of Dover and Orono.”
– Orono star Brian Butterfield, future third base coach for the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox
“Skip and I wondered what have we created in Todd because he just got so involved in this basketball thing starting when he was two years old,. He was humming and singing the Star Spangled Banner and he had made a basket out of a milk carton and taped it to the refrigerator. A few years later he was doing commentary like he was doing radio play-by-play of Ponies games in the kitchen. `The Ponies stop, set and shoot! ‘And then he would pretend he was Orono. I thought `Oh my God what have we created?!”
– Peg Hanson, Skip Hanson's wife and Todd Hanson's mother
“We got there fast and we got home fast and we watched the game. Dover beat somebody … We drove up to scout them and, I hate to say, but we came out of there with the opinion we could beat Dover. We didn’t think there was anybody who could beat us. That’s a bad attitude to get, when you are 17-18 years.”
– Medomak Valley High School star Al Baran
“Kevin was the best high school player ever from Maine. I can name a lot of great kids, but he was one of the best. This kid from Newport (Duke University freshman Cooper Flagg) may end up being the greatest player from Maine.”
– Maine sports broadcasting legend George Hale
Inspiration For The Book
When I was riding home to Dover-Foxcroft from Augusta inside the bus with the Foxcroft Academy Class B State Championship Boys Basketball Team on March 1, 1975, I had some idea what to expect miles ahead, but no idea I would be writing a book about it 50 years into the future.
It all changed at my 50th high school reunion in 2022.
The inspiration for this book was born out of a conversation with an FA classmate, Duane “Dewey” Warren. Knowing I had been a longtime sportswriter, Dewey asked me to write a bio for him for his induction into the Foxcroft Academy Athletics Hall of Fame. Upon reading it, Dewey was impressed and ask why I had never written a book. Our subsequent late-night cross country conversations concluded that I should write a book about the undefeated 1975 FA state championship boys basketball team.
I remember that team. I covered that team. And, at the time — when I was inexperienced, immature, and naive at my job — I actually felt like a member of that team. That was the impact that team had on so many people, not just me, as it made all of us feel like winners.
Through the years I covered pro teams in Super Bowls, World Series, World Cup, and the NBA and NHL playoffs and college teams in football bowl games and NCAA basketball tournament games including the Final Four, but nothing compares to the feeling of your first championship team.
Hence, this book is important to me personally and professionally. It is in some ways my romanticizing it as Maine’s version of Hoosiers.
It meant tracking down people through LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, and Foxcroft Academy alumni relations and asking them to remember events from 50-60 years ago when I have a hard enough time remembering things from 50-60 minutes ago. I made two special trips back to Maine for research and face-to-face meetings from Scarborough to Augusta to Boothbay Harbor to Orono to Greenwood Pond to the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame in Bangor.
Yet with each in-person, phone, email, text, or DM interview I conducted for this book, I was moved by the myriad of emotions it revealed and the emotions it evoked in me and others. I laughed more than I have in years at the stories I was told and winced at some of the sad ones that got lost along the way. I rejoiced in the basketball tradition achieved at Monson Academy and ached for the misery the town felt when the school closed because of a school district consolidation. I researched the basketball shortcomings at Foxcroft Academy and tried to examine and explain the purpose and process aimed at changing that. I rebooted the memories and sentiment I experienced in the years I followed the Ponies and the dozens of games I covered leading up to the state championship game.
There was one common theme, however, throughout this project. Everyone remembered the sign — The Last One Out Of Town Turn Out The Lights. It became to me the obvious title for the book, though it would be hard to squeeze it all onto the cover.
The book project was an absolute blessing. It rekindled friendships and created others. It uncovered stories and gracious people willing to share them. And it reconnected me to my high school, my hometown, and my home state and how extremely proud I am of all three.
I hope this book impacts you reading it the way it impacted me researching and writing it.
About The Author
Dave Albee, a 1972 graduate of Foxcroft Academy voted “Most School Spirted” as a senior in the school yearbook, was an award-winning sportswriter and sports columnist for 35 years at five newspapers in four states from Maine to California.
His first big break came while he was an attentive clerk at an A&P grocery store in his native town of Dover-Foxcroft, Maine trying to pay off his college debt. One day in 1973 while working at the A&P, Dave was bagging groceries for the sports editor of the local weekly newspaper, the Piscataquis Observer, when he asked her if she was planning to cover Foxcroft Academy’s big season-opening basketball game at Orono High School that coming Saturday night. When she said “no” and admitted she knew little about basketball, Dave on a whim and on the spot volunteered to cover the game for her. Dave drove to the game, wrote a game story longhand on Sunday, submitted it to the Observer on Monday and on Tuesday received a phone call from its editor/publisher offering him a full-time job at the age of 19.
That launched Dave’s long newspaper career which included assignments with USA Today/Gannett News Service and The Sporting News and covering multiple Super Bowls, World Series, NBA and NHL playoff games, World Cup soccer, NCAA football bowl games, and NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournament games. He received numerous nominations and writing awards in the annual Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) contest and "Best Of Gannett." Dave, now residing in Petaluma, CA, is an honorary member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, who has voted on player induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame and on selection for college football’s Heisman Trophy.
Despite covering some of the world’s biggest sporting events, teams, and players during the past five decades, it is Foxcroft’s first and only state basketball championship season that Dave covered for his hometown Observer in 1974-75 that served as the inspiration for his book — “The Last One Out Of Town Turn Out The Lights.”