By Sarah Stebbins
Photos courtesy of University of Maine Athletics
From our October 2024 issue
As a top high-school soccer recruit from Waterloo, Ontario, Abby Kraemer set her sights on the University of Maine. “There were a lot of people who were like, ‘Where’s Maine?’” Kraemer says. “But I wanted to be on that historic first team to win a championship.” She got her wish last fall, during her junior year, when the Black Bears won their first-ever America East Conference tournament, earning a berth in the NCAA Division I tournament. That winter, Kraemer, a striker and the team’s leading goal scorer, became the first UMaine soccer player to be named an NCAA Division 1 All-American.
The Black Bears are particularly fierce at home, where, as of press time, they hadn’t lost a game in two years. Their turf field, which is also the Mahaney Diamond baseball field, encompasses part of an orangey-brown infield and has only a few bleachers for fans. “Other teams definitely hate to play on our field,” Kraemer says, noting that the harder-than-average surface causes some wild hops that can make the ball tough to control. This fall, the university will break ground on a dedicated soccer field with a grandstand. Kraemer, though, will graduate in December, before the new field is ready. After school, she hopes to play professional soccer and then put her biochemistry degree to work by attending medical school. For now, plenty of fans are happy to sit on the sideline turf to watch Kraemer and her teammates play. “It’s the environment we’re able to create there that makes it special,” she says.
