By Kevin Mills,Staff Writer

AUGUSTA – It was like dissecting game films after the first action of the season.

The pilot schools for Sports Done Right gathered Thursday to review, reevaluate and revamp strategies for implementing the federally funded initiative.

After hosting conversations in their respective communities, the pilots discussed the successes, failures and ideas from those initial steps.

“In general, what we’ve heard about are good starts,” said J. Duke Albanese co-director for Sports Done Right. “The numbers of people that have come have varied, but I think the general feeling though is we’re off to a good start.”

The 12 pilot programs, including sites in Lewiston-Auburn, Poland and Winthrop, shared what they’ve done and might do better. They also began plotting the next stages. All the pilots must hold another community meeting prior to a training session in late September.

“We put an action plan together and today, we probably crossed off half of it and made a bunch of changes on it,” said Paul Amnott, athletic director at Lewiston.

One of the early success stories came from Winthrop, where the school board voted down the pay-to-play policy that had existed.

“The board chair literally said Well, we don’t feel that great about having pay-to-play to begin with, and now being in the Sports Done Right document that’s across the state and being a pilot site, I guess we better vote and get rid of it,'” said Winthrop AD Eric Turner. “We were pushing for it to begin with, but this was the little extra authority that we needed to convince them.”

It is just the kind of impact on policy that Sports Done Right hopes to initiate.

“To have a local school committee reconsider, and not go that way because we’ve had conversations about that, it’s just terrific,” said Albanese.

Some sites like Lewiston-Auburn began with small meetings. Earlier this month, most of the coaches from schools gathered to review the report and discuss its implementation. They plan to follow that up with a meeting with 50 athletes from each school Sept. 13.

“We want to make sure everyone’s on the same page and understand what the whole program is about and what we want to try to do,” said Amnott.

Poland had a community forum and barbecue last week. It hopes to have a coaches’ summit in August, which will help plan a parents night prior to the fall season.

“We kind of geared everything to try to get the word out,” said Susan Robbins, co-curricular director at Poland. “We used our first forum as an educational tool. We got the school board approval and then did that. Now we’re going to tackle it and try to get feedback for August.”

Some of the negative reports included low turnout at some meetings, especially parents and community members. One pilot site had just seven people attend.

“You’ve got to keep persistent,” said Albanese. “I think from several angles, we’ve got to take smaller steps and form more of a mosaic rather than have a big bang thing.”

There were also concerns about cost, uneven implementation and the perception that Sports Done Right is a mandate that will water down sports in local communities, especially in middle schools.

Walter Abbott, former UMaine football coach and long-time professor, told the pilot schools that the message should be that Sports Done Right still encourages athletes to go at it hard, but in the right way.

“We’re going to be much stronger, not softer,” said Abbott.

The pilot schools were able to listen and incorporate other’s ideas into their own plans. Lewiston liked a role playing activity that Brewer used, and hopes to do something similar in its September meeting.

“It’s nice to have good ideas,” said Amnott. “It’s nice to see what other people are doing and some of the problems that they’re having and some of the successes that they’ve had.”

Poland hopes to develop a questionnaire for students, an idea it took from a school that got ample feedback from something similar.

“We’re going to do that over the summer,” said Robbins. “So we can kind of connect with parents and community members and do like a mass mailing along with our summer newsletter for sports and try to get people ready for the fall.”

Sports Done Right has drawn interest from nearly 30 states and Canada. Parade magazine will be interviewing Lewiston and Edward Little students this week for a feature to run in the fall.

In addition to the pilot schools, a training session was held in Orono Wednesday for non-pilot schools. Representatives from nearly 60 schools attended, including Dirigo and Gould Academy.

“From the (January) rollout to (Wednesday’s) meeting and today, there’s a huge percentage of Maine schools that are engaged in some aspect of the conversation,” said Albanese.