Despite standing only 5-foot-9, Steve Pound was a towering figure in the Maine basketball community.
The Millinocket native was part of the inaugural class for the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014. He knew how to score, putting up repeated 50-point games at Stearns High School before the advent of the 3-point line and finishing his college career at Acadia University in Nova Scotia as the school’s leading scorer.
He also knew how to win, leading Stearns to a 1968 Class LL state championship and Acadia to a 1971 Canadian national championship.
And perhaps above all, he knew how to work hard and support those around him. Pound went on to become a longtime coach and educator, leaving a legacy that transcended his accomplishments on the court.
Pound died on May 2 just two days before his 75th birthday after a long illness. His family, friends and the Maine and Canadian basketball communities that he helped shape over the years have been remembering his many contributions to those around him.
“When I was growing up, all my friends had their basketball heroes that were pros,” Kim Pound, Steve’s younger brother, told the Bangor Daily News. “Mine was my brother.”
Kim Pound said his brother “was John Stockton before John Stockton.” And he recounted some of the ways that his brother helped him learn and grow on the basketball court while still making sure that he could be his own person and player, rather than being stuck in the shadow of a prominent older sibling.
“When I was about 9 years old, 10 years old, he took me on the basketball court and there was a game one-on-one, but it was make-it-take-it. If you made the basket, you took it,” said Kim Pound, who went on to have his own impressive career at Stearns. “He beat me 100-0 and then he looked at me and said, ‘You know something, I want you to know what it’s like to lose. Now you’re gonna know what it’s like to win.’”
Steve Pound averaged 40 points per game during his senior year in high school and scored a whopping 68 points in the first game of that season. For all the points that he put up as a “ferocious scorer,” his brother said it was the team wins that he really cared about. And that team focus was something that Pound exuded off the basketball court as well.
“Not only was he a great basketball player, but he cared about people,” Kim Pound said. “He mentored people. If they needed help, he would reach out and help them.”
Steve Pound played basketball professionally for two years in Europe before becoming a high school teacher, coach and administrator in Canada, according to his obituary. He earned several graduate degrees including a Ph.D. in educational leadership.
He returned to Acadia where he was director of alumni affairs and served as the assistant coach of the men’s basketball team. He would eventually return to Maine and serve as superintendent in Greenville, and later became the associate director at Cianbro’s workforce development institute.
His wife, Elisabeth Pound, said he was focused on always giving his best with anything he was involved in, and that he approached basketball as an opportunity for lifelong learning about how to work together as a team.
“He could light up a room,” she said. “And it was all about kids, people, programs.”
She added that his tenacious energy meant that “he could put 80 hours in a 40 hour week.”
In addition to being a member of the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame, Pound had been a member of its executive board for years.
“There’s probably three or four people that are, I consider, on the Mount Rushmore of the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame in terms of getting it started and being in it as well,” Hall of Fame executive director Todd Hanson said. “And Steve is certainly in that group.”
Hanson said that inaugural hall class “indicates really the true giants of the game in Maine because we’ve had so many great coaches and players come through.
“And to be part of that first class really speaks of Steve’s accomplishments as a basketball player,” Hanson added.
Hanson highlighted that Pound is in several other halls of fame as well. That impressive list includes the Maine Sports Hall of Fame, the Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame and Acadia University’s sports hall of fame. Hanson stressed that beyond the game of basketball, Pound’s attributes as a person, leader, father and friend are “hall of fame worthy as well.”
Despite all of the accomplishments, Elisabeth Pound explained that it was the people in her husband’s life — their children, grandchildren, other family and friends — that meant so much to him. She said his final words were clear: “My family.”
“He was bigger than life,” she said. “I know that’s a cliche, but he was.”
