The man will be missed
Andy Frace was a successful high school basketball and soccer coach, as well as a teacher.
But to those who knew him, he was much more.
Frace died Jan. 29 at his home in Orono at age 65.
“You couldn’t find a better person than Andy Frace,” said Mike Webb, John Bapst High School girls basketball coach who had Frace as an assistant for “six or seven years.”
“He put everybody first instead of himself. He had a smile on his face every day. The kids loved him. He taught the girls a lot of life lessons [in addition to basketball],” Webb said.
“If there was ever a person who was meant to work with kids, it was Andy,” Orono High School athletic director Mike Archer said. “He had such a way with kids. He made them feel important.
“You could talk to Andy for the first time in your life and develop an immediate trust,” Archer added.
Frace taught at several schools and most recently was the director of the alternative education CORE program in Orono.
Archer, who briefly filled in as the assistant principal at Orono, observed Frace in the classroom. He said “the public school setting wasn’t the right fit” for Frace’s CORE students.
He said watching those students progress under Frace was impressive.
“To see what they were and where they were at our school, to what they became with Andy, was awesome to see,” Archer said. “Andy was all about life lessons and how everything directly related to their lives. He had an affinity for tough kids who had been through a lot of hard times in their lives.
“He had been through a lot in his own life. He was a Vietnam veteran. He told the kids when you were dealt a setback, the importance of getting back up.
“He taught them that life with an education is a lot easier than life without one, and he did it in a non-threatening way,” Archer said.
Dave Paul’s daughters, Kayla and Darby, played basketball for Frace at John Bapst.
“He was as nice and as caring a coach as you would ever find,” said Dave Paul, who also coached with Frace. “He loved every kid he coached and the same was true in reverse. No matter what he coached, he had the same personality, the same demeanor and the same sportsmanship. What you saw is what you got. There was nothing phony or pretentious about him.”
His daughters said he was their favorite coach.
“He treated us like people and not just his players. He treated us as equals,” Kayla Paul said.
“He was very kind. We always had so much fun. There was never a dull moment in any practice or any game.”
“He knew when to be serious and when to have fun,” Darby Paul said. “He taught us not to take things so seriously and how to laugh at yourself. He was a fun guy. We learned how to handle a loss. He helped us all grow as people [not just basketball players].”
The Pauls said Frace had a sarcastic sense of humor, which served him well with his players.
Frace had an impressive coaching resume. He coached boys soccer teams at Central High of Corinth, Hampden Academy and John Bapst. His Hampden Academy teams won Eastern Maine Class A championships in 1995 and 1998.
He guided John Bapst to the EM Class B title in 2006, his first season at John Bapst.
He also was the head boys basketball coach at Hampden Academy for seven years, coached the John Bapst freshman and JV girls, and was an assistant varsity coach.
“He had a way of turning a team around. He got the most out of his players. He put them in situations in which they would benefit the most,” Darby Paul said.
In 2007, Frace scheduled a sledding party for his John Bapst girls freshman basketball team at Essex Street Hill in Bangor. He arrived early with his son Lucas, Kayla Paul and two of her teammates. Frace was badly injured during a sled run. He underwent several surgeries and had broken bones from his shoulder to his pelvis.
“We were scared to go down the hill, so he went down by himself [to test it],” Kayla Paul said. “That could have been one of us.”
Steve Vanidestine, athletic director at Bangor High, called Frace a “very nice man. He was a gentleman. I liked him.”
Vanidestine said he was respectful of his opponents and was always nice to talk to.
Frace often was seen at local sporting events.
“He loved athletics. He loved seeing kids in their element where they could be successful,” Archer said. “He got a lot of joy out of that.”
