Last year, discussions about Belfast High School’s Eastern Maine champion football team began and ended with tailback Eddie King.

Not surprising, considering the LTC Class B Player of the Year ran for 1,135 yards and 13 touchdowns.

While King was leaving his shoe prints all over opposing players last season, backup Troy Sprague became the forgotten tailback with just seven carries for 26 yards.

This year, Sprague has been hard for opposing teams to forget.

Despite being plugged into a two-back set with fullback Greg Bouchard and being converted to halfback, Sprague is only 127 yards away from a 1,000-yard season.

“I wasn’t looking at getting 1,000 yards, but then I had three straight 100-yard games so I figured maybe I could get it,” Sprague said.

He’ll have one more game to try and reach the 1,000-yard plateau, but that milestone won’t be foremost on his mind as he and his Belfast teammates try to win the school’s first outright state title since 1967 (Belfast shared the 1968 state title with Morse).

The 10-1 Lions will travel to Colby College’s Seaverns Field Saturday to take on 10-0 Mountain Valley of Rumford in the 1 p.m. Class B state game.

Although the success of Bouchard and fullback Joe Littlefield have limited Sprague’s number of carries, their presence has also made it almost impossible for defenses to gang up on Sprague.

“Last year, they keyed on Eddie. But this year, they can’t really key on all three of us,” Sprague said.

Winslow found that out two weeks ago when Bouchard blitzed them for 153 rushing yards while Sprague was held to 33. Four weeks ago, Littlefield had 110 yards and a touchdown against Old Town.

“We don’t care who get the carries as long as we win,” said Sprague. “We all grew up playing together and there’s no jealousy.

“When we were little, we used to go to all the high school games but we never watched. We just played on the sidelines. Me, Greg, B.J. [Bryant], Joe, and Roland [Littlefield] would go down to a grassy spot near the endzone.”

Sprague’s contributions as a two-way starter (halfback and cornerback), punter, and punt returner have been integral in Belfast’s return trip to the state championship. The Lions lost to Leavitt 27-8.

Sprague’s statistics this season are impressive: 873 yards and 12 touchdowns on 166 carries, nine catches for 167 yards and three touchdowns, four punts for 113 yards, and 29 punt returns for 498 yards and a TD.

As a second-year defensive starter, Sprague (18 solo tackles, 31 assists, four interceptions, one fumble recovery) has been a leader on the field.

“He was learning last year. By the end of the year, he was a quality defensive back,” said Arthers. “This year, it was like having a coach back in the secondary.”

The 5-foot-6, 130 pound player has more than carried his relatively modest weight on this team.

“He’s been much more durable than I thought he would,” said Belfast coach Butch Arthers. “Troy doesn’t weigh much, but he’s a tough kid to get hit by some of the guys in this league and endure it.”

Arthers credits Sprague’s resiliency to wrestling. Sprague won Eastern and State crowns last winter in the 119-pound weight class.

“I like it when the other team looks at me and sees how small I am, they think they can knock me out of the game with a big hit,” Sprague said. “And I’ve taken a few big hits, but I just get up and go back to the huddle every time.”

Comparisons to King were inevitable as Sprague kept improving.

“We discouraged that as much as we could. Eddie was special and we didn’t want to pressure Troy,” said Arthers. “Troy relies on his speed a little more than Eddie did, but they’ve both come up big in big games. A lot of our guys have.”