Issue date: 12/3/07 Section: Maine Sports

Nolan Boike

When fall baseball ended for the University of Maine Black Bears on Oct. 13, senior Nolan Boike put his cleats in a duffle bag for the winter and dug out his skates. He's living a dream with feature film potential.

UMaine head coach Tim Whitehead surprised Boike with the challenge of a lifetime earlier this fall when he invited him to join the hockey team for his final season at the university. His is a story that proves there's always a chance things will work out in the end.

He skated onto the ice in the Alfond to play in his first-ever UMaine hockey game on Oct. 19 to help his new team sweep Mercyhurst, just one week after his obligations to fall baseball ended. It was a weekend he said he would never forget.

"I saw myself on the lineup that weekend and all I could think was 'Wow, so this is it, this is what I've been waiting for my whole life,'" Boike said.

Since that Mercyhurst series, Boike has been a fixture on the team, playing in nine of the Black Bears' 12 games this season.

Whitehead had a relationship with the Boike family all the way back to his coaching days at UMass Lowell, where he recruited Nolan's older brother. He knew even before Nolan walked on to team tryouts that he was a good kid from a good family with plenty of athletic talent to spare.

Boike's history with Black Bear hockey started during his first year, when he tried out for the team as a walk-on and made the squad. He stayed with the team through the fall and practiced, but never made it onto a lineup or into a game.

"At the halfway point [of the season] Nolan and I sat down and I mentioned to him that I didn't see a lot of light at the end of the tunnel for him that season," Whitehead said. "We were pretty deep at the forward position that year, which he realized."

"I knew he was a very talented athlete on the baseball field as well, so I think it was a smart move for him to focus his attention on baseball," Whitehead said.

So as Boike left the Alfond Arena that season-on good terms with the hockey coach-he focused his attention on Mahaney Diamond and a future with the Black Bear baseball team. The left-handed pitcher, who alternated between relief and starting appearances, hit his peak in 2006, when he pitched four scoreless innings against Stony Brook in the America East tournament semifinals to send his team to the NCAA tournament. That season, he finished with a 4.50 ERA, the lowest on the team for a pitcher with 40 or more innings.

Continued...

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