STANDISH — What makes a legacy? At St. Joseph’s College on Saturday, that question was answered on behalf of Mike McDevitt.

It was Mike McDevitt Legacy Day at the campus on the shore of Sebago Lake. McDevitt arrived at St. Joe’s in 1979 and has stuck around pretty much since, to the betterment of the small college.

As a basketball player for the Monks, McDevitt scored 1,381 points and grabbed 674 rebounds. He coached the women’s basketball team from 1988 to 2003, then again from 2009 through last season, 32 seasons in total. He also coach at the University of Southern Maine in 2008-09. His collection of coaching accomplishments is eye-popping. McDevitt went 667-231. His teams won at least 20 games in 22 seasons, and he never had a losing season. Between the Monks’ time in the NAIA and now the NCAA, he coached them to the national tournament 14 times.

Billie L’Heureux was a sophomore on the team when McDevitt took over the program.

“He was intense. He pushed us, but he was fair,” L’Heureux said. “He didn’t treat us like women’s basketball players. He treated us like basketball players.”

At a practice, L’Heureux passed the ball to McDevitt as hard as she could. He whipped it back to her. They went back and forth, throwing it as hard as they could, over and over. Finally, McDevitt stopped it. “Do you feel better now?” he asked.

She did.

When L’Heureux’s daughter, Lexi, was looking to transfer to a school closer to home from Wheaton College, St. Joe’s was a perfect fit.

“He took her right in and made her feel like part of the team already,” L’Heureux said.

Jordan Jabar graduated in 2021. The same intensity L’Heureux and her teammates saw from McDevitt was still there. Yeah, he was loud, but in the yelling, Jabar saw a purpose from her coach. Athletes will let you yell all day if they know it’s coming from a good place and not just bluster, and that’s what Jabar saw. In a game or practice, it didn’t matter. McDevitt pushed for their best.

“He expected a lot of us. Not just in basketball. In our classrooms. In our relationships. In how we held ourselves on campus,” said Jabar, who now works as a paralegal in the law firm founded by her grandfather. “He made us expect a lot out of ourselves, and I try to carry that into every single thing I do now.”

Mikayla Van Zandt grew up in Westbrook, not far from the St. Joe’s campus, and graduated in 2023. When she moved to Connecticut to take a job as an account manager in the ticket office of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun, it was a big deal to move that far from home. Her time playing for McDevitt helped prepare for the life-changing move, Van Zandt said.

“I remember when I committed to St. Joe’s, it was such a welcoming group,” she said. “When I was coming, I felt like this was going to be a good collective team, and it was going to feel like a family, feel like home.”

Now the athletic director and girls basketball coach at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill (her team is 15-2 with one game left in the regular season and ranked second in Class C North), one of the first people L’Heureux reached out to when she got her first coaching job was McDevitt. He fed her all kinds of tips, eager to help her succeed.

At a reception following the St. Joe’s women’s basketball team’s 69-48 win over Albertus Magnus, McDevitt said a few words. As a player, it was never his intention to get into coaching. He hoped to get a nice sales job, one with a good salary and a company car. Then he thought of how much Rick Simonds, who coached him first at Ellsworth High then at St. Joe’s, meant to his trajectory toward adulthood.

“If I could do that for the women who played for me, that would be a pretty cool thing,” McDevitt said.

McDevitt stood in front of the fireplace of the Hall of Fame Room. It was packed, and nobody said a word. They all listened closely, especially the dozens of women who still call him Coach.

What makes a legacy? It’s that.