NEWPORT – There they were, 10 to 15 football players challenging each other to contests of strength in the weight room about 45 minutes after another practice during the annual survival of the fittest known as double sessions.

The scene is played out at nearly 70 high schools in Maine each August. But this scene was different because of its location – Nokomis Regional High School.

More than 50 high school players and 60 middle school-aged hopefuls have turned out from the several small communities that feed into SAD 48 for the first year of organized football at the school. For many, it represents their first experience with the sport save for watching NFL games on television.

“We have a lot of risk takers just for the fact that they’re willing to give football a try,” said head coach Dave Evans, who has a state championship football pedigree from his days on the sidelines at Dexter and Stearns of Millinocket. “A lot of the kids have never played football before so they’re learning, and they’ve done everything we could ask them to do.”

Preseason practices have served multiple purposes at Nokomis: introducing players, their school and the communities at large to the sport on a participatory level, and preparing to embark on a schedule of at least seven games against similar developmental football programs such as Mount View of Thorndike and subvarsity teams from such schools as Foxcroft Academy, Mount Desert Island, Skowhegan, Bangor and Madison.

“It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” said Evans, “because you want to put the best product out on the field right now, and at the same time we’re building a program from the bottom up.”

So far, so good for the Warriors, who practice next to the high school but will play their home games – beginning Saturday, Sept. 3, against Mount View – in Corinna.

“We’re running a pretty simple brand of football right now, but we had an intrasquad scrimmage [Aug. 20] with 45 plays, and only four of them were broken, and we had only four that went for negative yardage. That’s pretty good at this point,” Evans said.

The plan is for Nokomis to eventually become an Eastern Maine Class B program to fit the school’s enrollment, though Evans said there is no specific timetable for that move. There’s also the possibility in the interim that once the program is more established, it could play at the Class C level without the possibility of qualifying for the playoffs until it is ready for Class B.

There’s also the matter of private fund-raising that is perhaps equal to the challenge of developing a quality football product to put on the field.

Yet there are some solid building blocks to meet the latter challenge, particularly along the line of scrimmage where Nokomis will average nearly 250 pounds per man this fall. That contingent includes seniors Dylan Carroll and Nolan Southard and junior Steve Shea.

Two juniors, Matt McDaniel and Joe Meyers, are vying for time at quarterback, as Evans has used two separate offensive units and two separate defensive units as much as possible during training camp in order to provide as many repetitions as possible to players who are new to the game.

“Physically we’ve got some good football players, and skill-wise and knowledge-wise they’re getting better every day,” Evans said. “Our seniors are providing great leadership. I think people are going to be surprised at how strong a team we are. We’ve got great size up front, and our skill-position people are getting to develop their knowledge of the game.”

NOKOMIS WARRIORS

2004 results: None

Head coach: Dave Evans, first year

Key players: Steve Shea, OT-DT, Jr.; Dylan Carroll, C-DT, Sr.; Jeremy Matthews, OT, Sr.; Nolan Southard, G-LB, Sr.; Matt McDaniel, QB, Jr.; Joe Meyers, QB, Jr.

Outlook: Nokomis is playing a schedule against subvarsity foes and other developmental teams as it copes with the growing pains of creating a program from scratch. Student interest at both the high school and middle-school levels has been impressive, the key is for that interest to have staying power for the long-term benefit of the program. One way to do that is by establishing a winning tradition, which the Warriors hope to begin in Year # 1.