For coaches, parents and student-athletes alike, former longtime Leavitt Area High School field hockey coach Wanda Ward-MacLean was a force who helped propel her players to their best potential — on and off the field.

“We called her the great Wandini ’cause she’s so amazing, so it seemed to just fit,” said Cathy Marston, the current Leavitt field hockey coach.

When Ward-MacLean was diagnosed with cancer in early 2020, she started going to the Dempsey Center for services, said Kendra Berry, a former member of the Leavitt field hockey team. The Dempsey Center was there for Ward-MacLean, a place where she could find resources and tools to help heal.

“I remember she instantly was like, ‘We need to be a part of this,’ and it was like, ‘OK, we’re making the team,’” Berry said.

The team organizes fundraising events like car washes, skills-and-drills nights for younger girls and bottle drives, she said. All tend to be successful ways to raise money directly from the community.

It is in Ward-MacLean’s honor that the Leavitt Area High School field hockey team continues to raise funds in the Dempsey Challenge, earning the top fundraising spot each year in the High School Challenge Team category since the squad started fundraising in 2021.

The team’s fundraising goal this year is $5,351 and the players had already raised 70% of that goal as of early September, according to Berry. The team has beat its goal in the four years it has been fundraising for the challenge.

“I think she would be in awe that we’re keeping it alive and keeping her (memory) going,” Berry said.

‘100% no matter what‘

Ward-MacLean became somewhat of a legend at Leavitt Area High School, coaching the field hockey team for nearly 40 years and teaching physical education there for 36 years.

She was known for her tough field hockey workouts and high expectations, but also for her compassion and dedication to her students — even spending her own money to buy equipment for students who could not afford it.

Translating the fighter spirit she developed on the field into her real-life battle with cancer, she stayed strong and fought a tough fight against cancer, ultimately losing that battle in the summer of 2023, Marston said.

“She never gave up, it was always, ‘There’s got to be another way, there’s got to be another treatment, I’m not done fighting,’” Marston said.

Her family, friends, colleagues and students always knew her to be someone who gave her best in all her pursuits, and tried to help anyone along the way. They were personality traits that her younger sister Robin Ward-Burton remembers seeing from a young age.

“In everything that she did she always had that, you know, ‘I’m going to defeat this,’ or ‘I’m going to win this,’ or ‘I can do better than where I am, I’m going to improve myself,’ she always had that attitude,” Ward-Burton said.

Ward-MacLean was the middle child of seven children growing up, six of whom were girls, according to Ward-Burton.

The whole family was athletic, she said. Their house in Bridgton was the neighborhood hangout where they played kickball, softball and other sports with kids who lived nearby. It is where the girls in her family proved they could keep up with the boys. Often, they were thought of as tomboys.

Sports were limited for little girls when the two sisters were growing up, girls were not allowed to play Little League, she said. So it was not until middle school when Ward-MacLean had the opportunity to express her passion for sports.

And because field hockey was not popular, it was not until high school that Ward-MacLean started playing the sport, her sister said. After high school graduation in 1977, she went on to play field hockey at the University of Connecticut.

After college she moved back to Maine, where she took some substitute teaching jobs and helped her high school field hockey coach, Linda Whitney, coach the Lakes Region High School team, Ward-Burton said.

But soon Ward-MacLean wanted to strike out on her own and find a place where she could have a greater positive impact on young people, her sister said.

When a field hockey coaching position opened up at Leavitt Area High School, she took the job, and soon after became the high school gym teacher — staying with the school for most of her teaching career before retiring in 2019 at 63.

When she started her coaching career, Ward-MacLean took many of the lessons she learned from Whitney at Lakes Region and applied them to her own coaching style, her sister said. Both believed in being honest, hard work and that you are only as good as the work you are willing to put into your athletic or academic pursuits.

“She would always support anybody at any time, it didn’t matter if it was day or night. If she received a phone call from a student, or a player, or even a parent, she was always willing to speak with them, meet with them if necessary,” she said. “She always tried to be a good role model for anybody, whether it was a student, a player, a parent, she 100% believed in leading by example.”

The great Wandini

Marston had Ward-MacLean as a field hockey coach when Marston was a student at Leavitt, helping to push her athletic abilities, she said.

It kicked off a lifelong friendship between the two, with Ward-MacLean continuing to support Marston as she earned a spot on the women’s USA Masters Field Hockey team, she said. She also coached the Leavitt field hockey team alongside Ward-MacLean.

Ward-MacLean had high expectations for her players but it was because she knew her students were capable of great things, Marston said. Though she might have seemed tough on the outside, she cared deeply for her students.

“She’s so rigid on the outside but she was like, if you knew her well enough, if you were lucky enough to know her personally, she was the most compassionate giving person I’ve ever met,” she said.

It was those high expectations that has kept Leavitt’s field hockey team highly competitive over the decades — always winning more games than they lost each season.

Her coaching record reached up to 400 victories, with the final win coming against Lisbon during an early season game shortly before she died in 2023.

The team claimed several state titles under Ward-MacLean, most recently in 2021. Helping to build the Turner-based field hockey program into the roughly 80-kids-plus team it is today was due in large part to Wanda-MacLean’s efforts, Marston said. 

After being handed the torch, Marston finds that her coaching has been heavily influenced by Ward-MacLean, she said. After the Ward-MacLean succumbed to her battle with cancer in 2023, Marston felt immense pressure to do well in her mentor’s honor.

That first season without Ward-MacLean was emotional, Marston said. There were many trips to Ward-MacLean’s gravesite in search of advice for how to handle certain things and every game ball that season was set upon her gravestone.

Marston knows it is impossible to replace Ward-MacLean but she does hope her field hockey coach and longtime friend knows how much she cares.

“You just try to make her proud,” she said. “That was it, I was just trying to make her proud, not from winning and losing it, just in the sake of how you handle the kids and how you handle the program and everything involved.”

Honoring loved ones

The last group of girls coached by Ward-MacLean graduate this school year and the new girls coming onto the team didn’t have chance to play under her, Berry said.

The way Berry motivates the girls to fundraise for the Dempsey Challenge now has shifted a bit as she learns about how many players have been touched by cancer themselves in one way or another.

“It’s remarkably sad how much cancer has touched all 27 of these girls, like they were able to list off someone they knew within seconds, and so that’s just kind of what I’m also trying to push,” she said.

Ward-MacLean may be the reason why team members started fundraising, but many now also fundraise in honor of their own family members who battled cancer, Berry said.

Leavitt senior and field hockey player Payton Olivier became personally impacted by cancer when her father was diagnosed around the same time Ward-MacLean was battling cancer, she said.

Though her dad is OK now, she remembers feeling scared and concerned for him while he was going through treatments, she said. Just having the experience matured her a lot, feeling like she had to be there to help support her father. She even considered quitting the team freshman year but is grateful now that she stuck it out.

“I had to be there for my dad, I had to be a support system, so I definitely think it changed me,” she said.

Olivier had Ward-MacLean as a freshman, and one thing the coach taught her was not to apologize every time she messed up and not to get down on herself for messing up, she said.

Emma Ban Tuinen, a Leavitt senior and field hockey team member, remembers feeling awkward asking people for money when she first started fundraising, she said. But after the first few donations it became easier and she is less shy now.

She had Ward-MacLean as a coach during her freshman year and remembers her as being supportive while also pushing the team hard, she said. She continues to fundraise in her former coach’s honor.

Ward-Burton hopes that people continue to be inspired by her sister’s fighter spirit and supportive nature, she said.

“I think people just need to know that you never give up,” she said. “Wanda beat breast cancer once, she was cleared 100% from it and then it ended up coming back later on, but even the second time she ended up being diagnosed with it, she still had that spirit — she was not going to give up,” Ward-Burton said.

“She was going to continue living life, whether it was with friends, with family, with strangers, you know, new students, new players. She had that desire just to improve not just her life but anybody that was in touch with her.”

The Dempsey Challenge is this weekend in Lewiston. For more information go to www.dempseycenter.org.