DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine — Mark Chevalier’s next job not only will take him from the baseball diamond but will be fully an ocean away.
Chevalier, who guided Foxcroft Academy to one Eastern Maine championship and a second trip to the regional finals during his five seasons as the Ponies’ head coach, is leaving to become associate director of communications at The American School in Switzerland.
TASIS, an American international boarding school in Montagnola, a small Swiss village near the Italian border, offers programs for students ages 12-19. It’s located one hour north of Milan, Italy, and three hours south of Zurich, Switzerland.
“It’s been a perfect time and place for us to spend the last six years at Foxcroft and raise our first two kids and advance our careers,” said the 36-year-old Chevalier, who came to Foxcroft after teaching stints in Turkey and South Korea as well as a semester abroad in Australia during his college days.
Chevalier and his wife, Stephanie, both taught at Foxcroft, with Mark Chevalier being named named the school’s communications director in 2012. Stephanie Chevalier will continue to teach psychology classes at FA online from Switzerland beginning this fall.
“It wasn’t that we were looking to go abroad again,” he said, “but it was an opportunity that presented itself and after weighing all the pros and cons of leaving here and going there or going elsewhere and especially taking into account what it would be like for our kids (3-year-old William and 5-month-old Penelope) it seemed like something that would be too difficult to pass up.”
After guiding the Foxcroft junior varsity baseball team in 2010, Chevalier was hired by athletic administrator Tim Smith to his first varsity coaching job and went on to guide the Ponies to a 71-22 record.
Foxcroft went 16-0 in 2011 — the only undefeated regular-season record statewide that year — then advanced to the Eastern Maine Class C final before falling to Calais.
The Ponies moved up to Class B in 2012 and emerged from the No. 4 seed in the final Heal points to win the program’s first Eastern Maine championship since 2002.
The Ponies returned to the regional semifinals in 2013, with pitcher-shortstop Ryan Rebar named the state’s Mr. Baseball.
After suffering heavy graduation losses Foxcroft went 10-6 in 2014, then went 12-4 this spring as Chevalier was named the Penobscot Valley Conference coach of the year for the second time.
“There are a lot of things I’ll miss about living here and working at FA but I would say that coaching and working with the players over the last six years is the thing I’ll miss the most,” he said.
“There isn’t a baseball team at the school I’m going to be working at, but I figure with the new job it’s probably time to take a step back from coaching and pour all my efforts into the job. And then when the time comes I’ll get back into coaching, probably at the youth level with my son, which all along is what I figured I’d do.”
