SACO — If you’re one of those people who is convinced Thornton Academy is up to athletic malfeasance, you’re going to want to stop reading now. You’re not going to enjoy the following 750 or so words.
Thornton is set to open its brand-spanking new Miles Field House this weekend. It’s a $14.5 million facility that would fit in on most small college campuses. The Trojans are going to play basketball and volleyball in it. There’s a 200-meter, three-lane track, as well as a three-lane 55-meter sprint track. The basketball court is bracketed on each side by a small full basketball court, around the size of one you might find in a city park.
This new building abuts the school’s Hill Stadium, which this summer will get new artificial turf, a resurfaced track, and a new LED scoreboard. Hill Stadium already houses a weight room that, like Miles Field House, would fit in at a small college’s fitness center.
Students who get to use the new facility are impressed.
“I can’t even explain how much better this is. The old gym is ancient compared to this,” said Brooklyn Desrochers, who is completing her junior year and plays volleyball and lacrosse. “You walk in here and it’s like, wow. The weight room is nuts, too.”
Brooke Bodnar is a sophomore who plays basketball and lacrosse. Shooting at the new court might at first feel like tournament games at Cross Insurance Arena or the Portland Expo, where the rims can feel like they’re floating in space without the backdrop of a gym wall, but Bodnar thinks her team will adjust quickly.
“A couple practices in and we’ll get it,” she said.
This facility was 10 years in the making, said Eric Purvis, the president of Thornton Academy’s board of trustees. The plan is for it to be the center of health and fitness for the school community. Local residents will have access to use it as well. The track is perfect for getting in a walk on a rainy day.
Of course, there’s a segment in Maine that will roll its eyes and see the Miles Field House as part of Thornton Academy’s master plan to recruit its way to Maine high school sports dominance. That’s ludicrous, of course. A huge majority of the school’s 1,200 or so students are from Saco or nearby towns.
Every time the Trojans hoist a championship trophy, the high school sports message boards and online comments at the end of stories are full of grapes most sour. It comes up the most in football, where the Trojans have won seven state titles since 2012. There hasn’t been a Class A championship game played since 2017 that kicked off without Thornton prowling one of the sidelines.
Thornton recruits, they say. It must recruit. They see the small dorms lined up between Hill Stadium and Route 1, and they envision rooms full of super jocks, imported to Maine to pry Gold Balls out of your kid’s hands.
That’s a simplistic view that fails to take into account the biggest keys to high school sports success, consistency in coaching and a strong feeder program, and it’s one Thornton headmaster Rene Menard rightfully shrugs off.
“We can’t control what people outside say. All I know is, we’ve been here for over 200 years, and we’re fortunate the community has rallied behind us,” Menard said as he gave media a tour of Miles Field House on Thursday morning. “Look at these banners, right? Our athletic tradition goes back to 1893. We’re not some new flash in the pan here. We’ve been here a long time, and a lot of people worked really hard and are committed to building an athletic tradition here at Thornton Academy.”
The earliest of those banners memorializes Thornton’s 1893 football team, which leads to the question, how was a state champion crowned in 1893? It doesn’t matter. When they’re all up, there will be 89 banners hanging in the new field house.
“It takes a lot of work, and we don’t take it for granted. We’re blessed right now that we’ve been having some success, but it’s not all about success. People who are involved in high school athletics know it’s more than that,” Menard said. “Winning is nice, but it’s about building character. It’s about commitment. It’s about building teamwork and sacrifice. And sometimes you learn as much from losing as you from winning.”
Thornton Academy is hardly alone as an academy that serves as the high school for local students. The same thing happens at Fryeburg Academy, Maine Central Institute, Washington Academy and Foxcroft Academy, to name a few. Thornton is by far the biggest, though, and with that comes attention. Especially when year after year, season after season, you’re adding a championship banner to the collection.
In Miles Field House, Thornton Academy sees an opportunity to further the overall educational experience of its students. It sees an opportunity to eliminate practices that go late into the evening. It sees a place the community can benefit from, too.
Some will see another tool in an arsenal to get the upper hand on the rest of Maine high school sports, because they’re determined not to see anything else.