When Pete Cooper hung up his whistle after 33 years as a high school head coach last fall, he didn’t think he’d be trading it in for a microphone.

But the Lawrence High School coaching legend is doing just that as he prepares for his first of four college games as a color analyst.

Cooper and longtime Bangor broadcaster George Hale will team up in the booth to call the action during Saturday’s telecast of the University of Maine football home opener for Bangor TV station WABI (Channel 5).

“I really am looking forward to this,” said Cooper. “It gives me a chance to stay in the game of football without losing touch and to stay busy on the weekends. It’ll be different doing college games because I’ve spent so many years at the high school level.”

If he brings the same zest, enthusiasm, and degree of preparedness to his broadcasts as he did his games as the head coach at Lawrence, he should more than hold his own on the air.

“I hope I can. I really get a kick out of college football. There’s something about the college atmosphere that I love,” said Cooper, who led his Bulldogs to seven Eastern Maine crowns and two state titles in his last 17 seasons.

“I consider it a real privilege to work with him,” said Hale. “I’ve never worked with him before, but I know him very well. I did the Maine games when he was playing for them. That’s how far I go back with him.”

Earle “Pete” Cooper was a co-captain on Maine’s 1963 squad, which went 5-3 and was coached by Harold Westerman. His connections to Black Bear football don’t end there as his son Kevin is Maine’s linebackers coach.

Cooper won’t be the only guy getting a crash “refresher course” Saturday afternoon as Hale will be doing his first Maine football telecast in at least six years.

“It’s been a few years since I’ve done a Maine game on TV. It had to be back in the ’80s when I did my last one,” said Hale.

It was through WABI producer John Beaulieu that Cooper found his way into the broadcast booth. Cooper has been a guest analyst on at least four WABI broadcasts of regular-season and postseason high school football games over the last five years.

“He did an excellent job. Actually, I go back with Pete to 1982, when I produced a show called Monday Night Quarterback,” said Beaulieu.

Monday Night Quarterback was a weekly, half-hour show hosted by current Charlotte Hornets announcer Steve Martin. It focused on one big high school or college game from the previous weekend and featured highlights from a few other games.

“It seemed like Lawrence was always doing well back then, so he was on the show a lot. I was really pleased with his analysis,” Beaulieu explained.

Beaulieu said WABI will use five cameras and two replay machines for this and three more home game telecasts. The broadcasts will also be relayed to southern Maine on Portland TV station WPME (UPN 35).

WABI will use goal line cameras in each end zone, an elevated mobile camera on a sideline cart to “track” the action, a main camera in the grandstand, and an elevated camera in one end zone.