Vinny Keeler is fearless on the wrestling mat. But something happened over the weekend that made him chicken out.
That something was the Husky Community Howl-o-Ween Party in Gorham on October 27. The University of Southern Maine Athletics Department hosts the party every year at no cost for local kids in grades 5 and under. Student-athletes wear costumes with a different theme for each team. The wrestling team went as farm animals, and Keeler was a chicken.
“We’re fun people,” Keeler said. “I think sometimes people get the wrong impression of us. We’re not all scary. We’re nice guys.”
Keeler is a junior in the Marketing program. He and his teammates invited kids to try to beat them at Jenga. The game begins with a tower made of building blocks. Players remove one brick at a time until the loser causes the tower to collapse. No matter who won, every kid walked away with a few pieces of candy.
All kinds of games and activities were spread across Robie Park. Organizers moved the party into the Gorham community after years of staging it at the USM athletic fields. The change was supposed to happen last year, but the event was canceled in the aftermath of the mass shooting in the nearby city of Lewiston.
Getting the party restarted was a joint effort. Athletics administration, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and the Gorham Department of Recreation all had a hand in the planning. Jacob Kindestin was happy to make up for lost time. As a senior in the Marketing program, this year’s Husky Howl-o-Ween would be the last of his college career.
Kindestin and his teammates on the men’s ice hockey team dressed for the occasion as playing cards. His seniority allowed Kindestin to claim the coveted role of ace of diamonds. Despite their costumes, the hockey team didn’t play card games at the party. Instead, they ran a frisbee golf station, which made better use of their athletic skills.
“A lot of guys have that great eye for distance, especially with the wrist release. A big thing for us is wrist shots,” Kindestin said. “A lot of guys have great control with their hands and are able to accurately place it. We’re pretty on top of that.”
The natural flow of the crowd from one side of the park to the other created occasional lulls at the various game stations. That’s when the competitive drive of the student-athletes would kick in and they’d start playing against each other. Competition was especially fierce between field hockey players at the cornhole station.
Not every activity was about winning and losing. Spontaneous dancing, including a conga line of Minions, would break out around centrally located DJ booth. And a hayride made a leisurely circuit around the perimeter of the park, giving kids and parents a break from all the excitement.
The softball team would then rile up the kids all over again from their station near the drop-off spot for the hayride. The players oversaw an obstacle course with a Halloween twist. Before running it, the kids were first wrapped up with toilet paper as mummies.
The players stuck to the theme by also dressing as mummies. Kendall Migliorini went further than most of her teammates by even bandaging her face. She’s a junior in the Business Management program, but Halloween cast her mind back to grade school. And she hoped the kids she met that day would remember their experience just as fondly.
“I loved it. It was my favorite thing,” Migliorini said through a haze of memory. “I was this zombie bride for five years in a row. Love it.”