This comes to you from the “what-a-nice-thing-to-do” department.
I recently received a copy of the scrapbook Ashland High School girls soccer coach Bill Nemer presents to his players at the end of the season.
It is quite a scrapbook, and one I know the young ladies who played for the 1992 Hornets will treasure for a lifetime.
It will stay on their shelves for now, but one day will probably find its way to the attic, stored in a trunk or a box, to be taken out from time to time to renew old memories.
This is the 11th edition of this particular book, which is about as complete a history of the 1992 season as one could possibly find.
The scrapbook includes photos, articles from a variety of newspapers, the Heal Point Standings, memorabilia from the 19th annual Maine Soccer Coaches All-State Awards Banquet, information on area and state all-star teams, listings of past regional and state honorees, career records and much, much more.
What I found out when I called Nemer is that he not only prepares this book for the soccer team, but he does it for all his other teams as well.
Every team he has coached (with the exception of one, field hockey his first year at Ashland) has its own scrapbook.
He started the tradition, he said, because his mother did it for him.
“I don’t know if I would have done that for myself,” he said, “so I decided I’d do it for the kids.”
Today, people in the community look forward to the books as much as the players do.
Nemer certainly is busy, during the season, compiling information for the book. If I counted correctly, this scrapbook lists 87 career records for the girls soccer team. That litany includes everything from “Most Wins in a Season Overall” (14 by the 1989 team) to “Best Four-Year Record of Any Group of Seniors” which was this year’s seniors who ended their career 43-15-5.
The book also includes, by the way, the most mixed-up article I’ve ever seen appear under my byline.
It was one I wrote during soccer season when the girls were 9-0-2 and ranked No. 1 in the Eastern Maine Class D standings. It went out of my computer just fine, but somehow was pasted up so oddly even I couldn’t find where one sentence left off and another began.
Any bookholder who’d like a clear copy of that article can contact me. I’ll clip, paste, copy and send it along as it should have been so it will then be a “readable” addition to the book.
That particular article, by the way, may have been a jinx. “Did you notice we lost in overtime the day it came out?” Nemer asked. `Almost as bad as being on the cover of Sports Illustrated.”
Nemer bookholders include those on the girls soccer team, those who played five years of softball for him; five years of baseball for him; and seven years of girls varsity basketball.
The tradition has evolved from a scrapbook held together with staples, to the present-day bound style that should stand the test of time well.
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