Nervous. Intimidated. Nauseous. Those words all describe how I felt the first several times I interacted with the late Shawn Walsh.
I was a young 22-year-old sports reporter for WLBZ-TV in 1992 and 1993. Those dates will immediately ring a bell with University of Maine hockey fans who I’m sure can still vividly picture the late great head coach at the helm of the greatest college hockey team to ever take the ice.
What date may not resonate quite as quickly is Sept. 26, 2001. That’s the day that Coach Walsh lost his battle with cancer and passed away at the age of 46.
Perhaps you are as surprised as I was when I realized it’s been 20 years this past weekend that we lost him. Doesn’t seem possible that it’s been two decades.
Others can tell you much better than me about how Coach Walsh was truly one of a kind. He was an absolute genius as a coach and a master mind as a marketer.
To hang not one but two national championship banners at a school, and in a state, which has always had difficulty competing on a national level is a feat that has not been duplicated.
He was the king of the Alfond in 1993. He could’ve run for governor of Maine and won in a landslide.
He was tenacious, combative, passionate and intimidating as hell.
It wasn’t too many weeks into my tenure at Channel 2 that I saw him light up my counterpart from WABI-TV in an interview in the hockey locker room. I can’t recall exactly what lit the often short fuse of the great coach, but after the debris settled I pretty much vowed that I would never again be asking Shawn Walsh a question. I’ll leave that to the veteran reporters.
For the next few months, University of Maine hockey was the biggest story in the state as they made the run at a 42-1-2 season. I certainly was occasionally put into a position where I had to summon the courage to speak to Shawn. And in all honesty we did not have any bad interactions. Maybe he felt bad for me as I stammered and trembled my way through every meeting.
He had high expectations of not only his players and his coaches but really everyone associated with the program in any way.
In the summer following the 1993 championship, Lee Goldberg and I were sitting with Coach Walsh in his office in the Alfond. He dug into his desk and tossed out a couple of commemorative championship hockey pucks to us and told us he appreciated our efforts covering his team.
My puck is still sitting on a shelf in my home office.
Because when Shawn Walsh gave you a gift it meant a lot. Just like how he meant a lot to the hockey fans of this state, and is missed to this day, 20 years after his premature passing.
Jeff Solari is the founder of the Maine Sports Chowdah, Maine’s only free, weekly sports email newsletter. He has been in sports media since he was 17 and is not shy with his opinions or perspective on the world of sports. The longtime sports broadcaster is a graduate of Mount Desert Island High School and the University of Southern Maine. Previous gigs included WLBZ-TV and WCSH-TV, host of “The Shootaround” talk radio show on WZON and stints with “Downtown” and “The Drive.” Solari has won more than 15 Maine Association of Broadcasters and AP broadcaster awards.