GARDINER — Sitting on a metal folding chair at the back of the Gardiner Area High School coach’s office, Kyle Doody is deep in thought.
He’s thinking about when he broke the scaphoid bone — the wrist bone below the base of the thumb — in his right hand. It was during a football game against Edward Little, in the middle of the 2023 season.
“I doubled over (in pain) and had a couple of tears in my eyes, but other than that, I came off the field for one or two plays and finished the game,” Doody said and laughed. “I really didn’t think it was broken, I couldn’t feel the bones move (around), but (found out later) that there’s two ligaments on both sides of the bone I broke, so it was pulling them apart.”
Instead of sitting out, Doody played through the pain, from either being hit by opponents or making tackles, for the rest of the season. It wasn’t until after football season that he found out he had broken the bone.
“As time went on, it didn’t hurt as bad, but it hurt pretty bad,” Doody said. “I thought maybe something was wrong, but didn’t know it was as bad as it was. I was going to go into wrestling season with it broken, but the trainer asked me if it was still hurting, and I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘You should probably go get (an X-ray).'”
Gardiner’s Kyle Doody looks to tackle Mt. Blue’s Dane Cousineau during a game at Hoch Field in Gardiner this past season. Doody is a finalist for the Frank J. Gaziano Award, given to the state’s top offensive and defensive linemen. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel
“He just grits it out, in everything that he does, and takes on the responsibility of the team coming first, in everything he does,” Gardiner football coach Pat Munzing said. “He just adapted, and did stuff just to grit it, and he did that all the time. Watching Kyle, you wouldn’t know if he was at practice or a game, he just did everything at full speed.”
The injury forced Doody to miss all of his wrestling season, a crushing blow for a wrestler coming off a sophomore season that included a Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference title.
“He came to every practice last year and did everything one-handed last year, but couldn’t wrestle,” Gardiner wrestling coach Matt Hanley said.
A year later, Doody has returned to top form, both on the mat and on the gridiron. At 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds, Doody won the Pine Tree Conference Player of the Year award as a defensive lineman, racking up 67 tackles, including 28 tackles for a loss. He’s the first player in program history to be a finalist for a Frank J. Gaziano Award, handed out to the best offensive and defensive linemen in the state. The winners will be announced on Jan. 24.
“I came out (for football season) with a full head of steam, because I was worried I wouldn’t do as well (as the season before),” Doody said. “I wanted to go out with a bang, I wanted to do the absolute best that I could. I think it worked. (The Gaziano Award nomination) means a lot, because I put a lot on the line and have done a lot for the team.”
Doody is as classic a throwback for Gardiner as its worn-down orange lockers. An undersized player full of grit, Doody became successful using one attribute opposing offensive linemen didn’t have: Speed.
“My change of speed and reaction time off the ball (were key),” Doody said.
“The minute the ball was (snapped), Kyle was gone,” Munzing said. “That was part of why he was so disruptive. He did everything full speed, every snap, each time. Because he was so small and compact, I think it made it more difficult, even for some of the bigger offensive linemen. Against Oceanside, they had four guys try to block him, and they couldn’t do it.”
Doody has been just as impressive on the mat this winter. He won the 150-pound title at the Westlake Invitational and the Gardiner Tiger Invitational, and finished fourth at the Noble Invitational last month. Doody beat Mt. Blue’s Dillon Gray, last year’s Class A champion at 144 pounds, to win the Westlake title.
“He’s a better wrestler than he is a football player, and that’s quite a big statement,” Hanley said.
Gardiner’s Kyle Doody throws Oxford Hills’ Curtis Fogg during a meet Wednesday at Cony High School in Augusta. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel
Grappling with opponents his same size, Doody leans on strength as his key weapon on the mat. He’s competing in one of the more difficult weight classes in the state, with Noble’s Brady Ouellette and Camden Hills’ Landon Pease among the top contenders. Doody is working toward refining his skills before the conference and state meets.
“It’s good to get back into wrestling, but I’m still not where I should be,” Doody said. “I have nothing worth of a leg shot right now. I’m working on it. It’s nice to get back out in the field and trying to get back to where I was … I didn’t realize how jam-packed (150 was) until Noble. I didn’t think it would be possible for Brady Ouellette to gain 30 pounds in a year. (States) is not completely out of reach, but it’s harder than I originally anticipated.
“I just like going out on the mat and trying to have fun. I don’t know, I just love throwing people around.”
Doody’s skills go beyond athletics. He’ll attend the University of Maine, looking to major in physics, a topic he’s had a keen interest in for years.
“I knew that I’d like to do something with science; it wasn’t honed in on anything,” Doody said. “At first, I thought I liked chemistry. On my own time, I was on YouTube and, of course, I would watch the video that says, ‘Watch a baseball go into a wall at Mach 4 and see what happens.’ That’s what got me into (physics), the physical properties of what’s actually happening and why it’s happening. I’m pretty decent at math, too. I just like it, for some odd reason. Most of the stuff I’m into is fundamental work, theory-based work.”
“I always classified Kyle as the ultimate competitor, it doesn’t matter what (the subject) is,” Munzing said. “I went to UMaine as a civil engineer major, so I’ve been down that path. Kyle and I have had some discussions (on the subject). His vocabulary is unbelievable. He would frame some things and put together some metaphorical stories. I would always try to pick out some random word and teach the (players) vocabulary. I would always default to Kyle and go, ‘Kyle, what does that mean?’ He always had a definition, use it in a sentence. He’s very philosophical. He understands the bigger picture of things.”
Enjoying a mental challenge as much as a physical challenge, Doody also won $100 in a recent Poetry Out Loud competition, memorizing a 60-line poem.
“You have to say the poem exactly like it is, without having the poem in front of you,” Doody said. “(The poem) was ‘Translations from the English’ by George Starbuck. It took a couple days (to memorize). It sounds like a lot, but some of the lines are long, and some are short. It’s like acting. Putting your interpretation to the words, without changing the words. That was fun.”
“We stopped (wrestling) practice halfway through to watch him do this, and he won the whole thing,” Hanley said. “He does it in athletics, and he’s doing in the classroom. He’s just a great student in the classroom.”
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