AUBURN — At an early age, she learned it. As she grew up, she lived it. Now Val Brown Ackley teaches it.

Balance is something the former Edward Little standout athlete and coach was taught at a young age, and it has been a significant part of her life since. Her priorities were family, academics and athletics — in that order. It is a perspective her parents and coaches nurtured in her and is now something she instills in her own students.

“I really attibute the fact of me being where I am now and maintaining that balance and asking my kids to share that priority list with me to what I learned,” said Ackley. “I feel success is bred by having that priority list and being a goal setter and being able to achieve those goals by having a plan. That’s who I am and how I was brought up to be.”

Ackley’s name will forever be linked to her athletic career at EL. She starred in basketball, soccer and softball and later became a teacher and coach in the same community.

Her career path led her home because of her family, but it was also a result of her desire to provide her community what so many offered her.

“It was also about giving back to a place that set me up for a lot of success and helped drive me to reach for whatever I wanted to do,” said Ackley.

It is a dream that began with a biddy basketball advertisement in the Sun Journal and still exists today as she tries to continue the amazing work of the parents, coaches and teachers that inspired her.

“Having that influence and seeing what they could do as adults, I just wanted to do the same,” said Ackley.

Brown is one of four inductees to be recognized Sunday at the 30th Auburn-Lewiston Sports Hall of Fame banquet. Among the friends and family attending Sunday will be many of her former players and students.

Some of those former players are now coaches and teachers — and even babysitters, if Ackley needs one. Jessica Veilleux, a former player, now cares for Ackley’s three children on occasion.

“We have all these conversations about how she used to watch me play and then I coached her,” Ackley said. “Now she takes care of my kids. It’s a whole cyclical effect of how life works.”

Rooted in athletics

Ackley came from a family of athletes. He grandfather played in the Brooklyn Dodgers system. Her uncle played football at Lewiston. Her father, Tom, played at Cheverus.

So when she spotted an ad in the Sun Journal one morning about the basketball program at the YMCA, she asked her mother to sign her up. But before Wanda Brown wouldn’t let her six-year-old girl go to a program that was primarily boys in a venue in which single men lived, she made some phone calls.

“I begged her and so she made a phone call to the Y and Roger Child took the call,” Ackley recalled. “He assured my mother that it was a safe place for kids and that she should bring me down. He really spoke to her honestly about the program.”

She was the first of many girls that started playing there. Her coach was Bruce Reynolds, a man that became an integral part of her life. He knew just how to coach her and teach her. He helped set the tone for what followed for her as a person and athlete.

“He was probably the most influential on me in terms of building my confidence and really helping me develop my skills that didn’t come naturally to me,” Ackley said. “He pushed me, but he was so lovable and knew how to deal with me as a person.”

She had coaches like Craig Jipson and Mike Johnson on her travel teams. Mike Poulin coached her middle school team. All were early influences.

Her parents would take her all around the state for camps and clinics. In a time where there was no summer basketball, they’d even travel out of state to give their daughter the best opportunities. Despite the personal and financial commitments, her parents vowed to support her in whatever she chose to do.

“My parents made huge sacrifices for me to become the player I became because they took me everywhere,” Ackley said. “It was a huge sacrifice by my family. You really had to make an investment to get seen in order to even think about scholarships. I attribute all of that to my parents.”

When she was in high school, Ackley had teachers like  Patricia McCluskey, her math teacher, and Marc Gouse, who was also the soccer coach. She started helping out in the special education department with Faye Gagnon. Her work included a student that she had gotten to know outside of school in a local rec program.

“I did that work and I loved it,” Ackely said, who vowed then to coach and teach math at EL some day. “I was able to have that combination of classroom and the extention of the classroom in athletics. It really tied together for me what I truly wanted to do with my life, which was to teach and work with students in a classroom and extend those life lessons outside.”

Lessons learned and lived

Though she started playing basketball young. She didn’t play softball until she wasn’t allowed to play Little League baseball any longer. She didn’t  play soccer until she was nearly in high school. Her freshman year at EL was just the second year of the program.

She was a captain and earned all-conference honors in all three sports. She was also an all-state goalie and basketball player. She still holds numerous scoring records at EL.

The girls’ basketball team, led by Ackley, Tammy Paradie and Jen Lachance — all who went on to play in college — reached the Western A finals twice and lost. Ackley won the Miss Maine Basketball Award her senior year. It was when few even knew about the honor, and she was shocked at being chosen.

“It wasn’t just about basketball,” Ackley said. “It was about the person I was, and the teamate I was, and the sportswoman I was and the player that I was. It was about everything. To win that was the biggest honor I could have gotten. It was validating to win something like that.”

She went on to play basketball at Assumption College on a four-year scholarship and was a standout there. After teaching at David Prouty High School in Spencer, Mass., she returned to teach at Edward Little and took the varsity basketball job at Oxford Hills. She helped take that program to a new level while also assisting with the soccer program. She then got coaching jobs at Edward Little, coaching both basketball and soccer.

“People always attributed me to basketball, but I actually coached soccer longer and I really enjoyed soccer, too,” said Ackley, who would have played soccer in college if she’d been allowed to play both sports. “I loved goal keeping and playing for Coach Gousse was so much fun. I learned so much playing that sport.”

She was an assistant with the soccer team that won a regional title and lost in the state championship. She coached the basketball team to a pair of regional final appearances.

“There have been some disappointments in terms of results,” Ackley said, who is now the Math Department Chair at EL. “I was part of four Western Maine finals as a player and as a coach and we didn’t win one of them. In the end, did I work my hardest, did I have great teammates that I played with and great friends that came out of it and great memories? Yes.”

Her girls’ basketball teams reached new heights that the school hadn’t witnessed before. There were packed crowds to watch the girls play and an excitement that caught on in the community. It proved to be a precursor to a consistent level of quality girls’ teams to come, many of which Brown was part of as a coach and teacher.

She remembers winning a semifinal game at the Cumberland County Civic Center that returned EL to the Western A final for a second time. In the stands were Veilleux and Nicole Keene, now an assistant coach with the EL softball program with her sister.

“I remember going to see those kids when we won,” said Ackley, who also had a stint as an assistant basketball coach at Bowdoin. “They had their little basketball jerseys on. They’d come to the game. I ended up coaching both of those girls in soccer and basketball. Now they’re members of the community. Nicole is coaching softball with Elaine (Derosby). Jess is part of my kids’ lives. That’s the effect you can have. You don’t realize it at the time but what you did to provide girls the opportunities in the community, I really feel like that’s an impact I’ve been able to have.”

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