WESTBROOK — If it was warm enough to wear shorts and it wasn’t raining, you could probably find Treyjon Arsenault at the basketball courts by Fraser Field.

Football was his favorite sport and what he played at Westbrook High School. But once he was in the middle of a pickup basketball game, he took it just as seriously.

“He’d do everything he could not to lose,” said his friend Nicholai Kotsimpulos. “He’d play like it was a championship game.”

Treyjon Arsenault

Last May, when Kotsimpulos learned his 19-year-old friend had been killed the night before in a shooting in Portland’s Old Port, he organized a candlelight vigil for later that day that drew more than 100 people to the courts off Main Street to remember Arsenault.

At the time, Westbrook had plans to resurface the public courts, one full-size and one smaller, and had budgeted $30,000 for it. But when the city assessed the scope of the project, it seemed that more work was needed.

Plus, the place had taken on new meaning.

Friends and family of Arsenault had raised $5,000 for a plaque in his memory to be placed by the courts.

Now, that’s part of a $150,000 project to build two new full-sized courts in place of the existing ones and replace the drainage and lighting, which doesn’t work.

The City Council will vote Monday on whether to accept funds and award contracts for the project.

Along with the $30,000 from the city’s capital improvement plan, $75,000 will come from the Cornelia Warren Community Association, $30,000 from the Westbrook Environmental Improvement Corp., $10,000 from the city’s Recreation and Conservation Commission, and $5,000 from the fundraiser for Arsenault.

A 2014 Westbrook High School graduate, Arsenault had gone on to Saint Leo University in Florida, where he planned to study criminal justice. But he got homesick and came back to Maine after a semester.

Described by friends as athletic and energetic with a big personality and a goofy laugh, Arsenault was never someone who attracted violence but had started hanging around a tougher crowd after leaving college.

Still, he was looking toward the future, thinking about going back to school, becoming a barber or joining the military, said his mother, Nancy Laxson.

On the night of May 25, 2015, while Arsenault was at Da Block Studios on Fore Street in Portland with a group of friends recording music, a fight broke out and shots were fired. Another man was wounded. Arsenault was killed.

Two men – Johnny Ouch and Gang Deng Majok – have been charged with murder in the shooting and pleaded not guilty. They are scheduled to go on trial in September at the Cumberland County Courthouse in Portland.

If all goes as planned, friends and family of Arsenault will have something more positive to look forward to this summer. The city hopes to complete the basketball court project by the end of August.

Laxson said she’s overwhelmed by the community’s generosity and excited to see the final product.

The courts were the first place her son went every day when he came back from college, she said.

“He’d come home sweaty and hungry,” Laxson said.

Family and friends returned to the courts in March to celebrate his birthday. They held another candlelight vigil and released balloons. It was the obvious choice for a venue.

When he wasn’t at home, Laxson said, “that’s where Trey loved to be.”

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