Even before he was coordinating 23 sports teams and their facilities, USM Athletic Director Al Bean was doing yeoman’s work for the school.
A 1977 USM graduate, Bean was a workhorse on the baseball diamond, compiling a number of records and accolades as one of the school’s best pitchers of all time.
Now in his 15th year as athletic director and 25th as athletic staff, Bean is carrying on the legacy he created on the baseball field.
Since he became athletic director in 1993, Bean has used all available resources, including long days and nights, to create 11 new intercollegiate sports teams while revamping the school’s facilities.
As he sits in his corner office overlooking the university’s state-of-the-art field house, Bean is surrounded by relics of his efforts as athletic director.
Meticulously drawn and redacted sketches of the Costello Sports Complex sit proudly on the wall only feet from a leather-bound card that declares him the world’s best dad.
The journey, however, has not been an easy one for the former standout pitcher and South Portland native. During his tenure as athletic director, Bean has had to deal with a few bumps in the road.
In 1996 he was confronted with a gambling ring that ravaged the baseball team and then in the 2003-2004 school year, 42 student-athletes abused their work-study privileges, which culminated in an NCAA investigation and subsequent report.
But Bean, despite these infractions, has managed to persevere and lead the athletics department, using his experience as an athlete to his advantage.
“In sports, you learn more sometimes when you lose. It shows your character,” Bean says. “Sports teach you to adjust and make changes.”
Make changes he has.
And he’s used another legacy of his baseball career —- efficiency — to do so.
As pitcher for the Huskies, frugality was Bean’s calling-card.
And for a man who admits to not having the physical gifts to be a pitcher — with small hands and a short stature — Bean has a history of making the best of what’s around.
He ranks fifth of all time for USM in fewest walks per nine innings (1.27) and fourth in earned run average (2.65).
Following his career on the diamond, Bean’s efficiency and ability to make the best of what’s available has led to many major additions to the athletic program, even when money has been short.
“The success of our programs shows that he has done well with our limited finances,” said men’s basketball coach Karl Henrikson of Bean. The two have worked together since Henrikson’s addition in the fall of 2003.
Perhaps the greatest testament to Bean’s ability to work with limited funds is the massive Costello Sports Complex that was completed in 1998. The facility allowed for the housing of tennis courts, an indoor track and indoor practice facilities for various sports.
“When we first started talking about this facility, nobody thought we could do it,” Bean says about Costello as a preface for his newest endeavor, the renovation of USM’s outdoor athletic facilities.
Bean reaches behind him and grabs numerous turf samples as he explains the school’s need for a turf facility to accommodate the field hockey and lacrosse teams as well as the needed renovations to the baseball and softball fields.
“Since I got here in 1993, I haven’t wanted our teams to have to play on the current fields,” Bean explains, all the while pushing aside his greatest obstacle: USM’s ongoing budget crisis.
But as someone with a lineage in coaching, Bean knows the importance of gathering all manageable resources– — in this case, private funds — to be victorious.
If he had always given up when faced with hardship, Bean wouldn’t have been able to proudly explain the two very prominently framed letters that hang in his office.
“Those are from Bill Clinton and George Bush. They are from when our baseball teams won the National Championship in 1991 and 1997,” Bean says modestly.
But what he fails to mention, as he sips on his caffeine-free Coke, is that the 1997 team was the same team that had been pillaged by the gambling fiasco: an incident that he had controlled and subdued as athletic director.
When in the not-so-distant future a turf field becomes a reality at USM, Al Bean will rejoice for a moment, but like any good pitcher, he’ll move on to the next challenge.