The following appeared in the 7/7/00 edition of the Portland Press Herald and can be found online at:  http://www.portland.com/sports/college/hockey/000707sollcol.shtml





      Friday, July 7, 2000 
      COLUMN: Steve Solloway 


      A new life, and now it's a new battle



      Copyright © 2000 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


     





     
      "Am I fearful for him? He's probably my best friend. I'm scared to death for him."
      Alan Miller paused and over the phone you heard a deep breath. Some 10 days ago, Shawn Walsh confided in his friend that he had a cancer attacking one of his kidneys.

      Miller went cold. So would you.

      "The word cancer sends fear through anyone. When you're in your 20s, friends of your parents get cancer," said Miller. "Now that you're in your 40s, it's your friends. Yes, we're scared for him.

      "Forget about the hockey, forget about the University of Maine. All of that is so trivial now. This is about a man."

      Cancer has that way of simplifying things. For years Walsh was the great polarizer, the lightning rod. You loved him for the hockey players he brought to Orono and the national championships they won.

      And you hated him for the tarnish that was smeared on that first trophy after the NCAA discovered wrongdoing. You didn't want Walsh suspended. You wanted him booted out of Maine.

      Walsh nearly lost his job and his personal reputation was shot. His wife divorced him.

      And then he used his immense talent for focusing on objectives and organized the plan that would lead him back. He rebuilt the Maine hockey program, rebuilt his life and remarried. His team won another national title and his new wife bore him a son.

      That's why the news of Walsh's cancer has hit his friends so hard and affected many more of us. We love stories of people who remake their lives. The Shawn Walsh that Miller first met 16 years ago, the one filled with a confidence some saw as misplaced brashness or worse, changed several years ago.

      "Meeting Lynne and marrying her helped open up another life away from hockey," said Miller. "I've seen a whole new Shawn and it's been great. And this . . . "

      Before he left for Boston and his surgery, Walsh sat in front of his computer, searching the Internet for details on his particular form of cancer, its treatment and the recovery rates. 

      He studied the facts and numbers as he would a scouting report on Boston University's hockey team. He was so upbeat and positive, Miller's mood changed.

      "With Shawn, what is, is," says Miller who referred back to the Cory Larose incident of last spring. Larose was Maine's best player but had been ejected from the regional final with Michigan. The ejection meant Larose was suspended from the national semifinals.

      Walsh didn't waste time and energy crying about an injustice. He prepared Maine to win without Larose. The Black Bears didn't, but that's not the point.

      Walsh has always pushed his players hard. More than 10 years ago a captain asked Nonni Daly, who helped organize the break-up banquet, for five minutes at the podium with Walsh. Daly assumed the player wanted to give Walsh something.

      No, said the captain. "I want to punch that SOB in the nose in front of 600 people."

      Now, says Daly, that player makes sure to call or visit whenever he's traveling through Maine. 

      "I've had some of the biggest knock-down, drag-out battles with Shawn that you can imagine," said Daly, of Old Town, who once was the Hockey East commissioner. "We'd lock horns big-time."

      She sent Walsh to Boston with this: "Nothing can happen to you because I haven't finished abusing you."

      She laughed. It beat crying.

      Shawn Walsh has a tough fight in front of him, says his good friend, Alan Miller. The type of fight he always meets head-on. 

      Staff Writer Steve Solloway can be contacted at 791-6412 or at: [log in to unmask]