Bill Ashby is back in his home state and enjoying every minute of it.

The Lubec native is the first-year athletic director and men’s soccer coach at the University of Maine-Fort Kent after spending the previous eight years coaching soccer at NAIA colleges in North Dakota and Kentucky.

“It’s great to be back. I love having a fall again,” said the 45-year-old Ashby, who had spent four years apiece at the University of Mary (N.D.) and Brescia University (Ky.).

He was also the athletic director at Brescia and coached the women’s soccer team for two years.

Ashby admits the situations at the University of Mary and Brescia University were much different than the one at UMFK.

Brescia had 12 full men’s soccer scholarships and the University of Mary offered 10 while the University of Maine-Fort Kent doesn’t offer any athletic scholarships.

“The last two schools were really big athletic schools with a lot of scholarship money. The players were there for the scholarship money. It’s more refreshing here. The kids have more passion, more love for the game. I enjoy that,” said Ashby.

“Here you carry 20 to 22 players in your program. At the last two schools, I had between 40 and -50 including JV teams. You try to keep everybody happy but it’s tough when you carry that many kids. You end up losing a lot of kids. It was tough but it was good,” said Ashby. “It’s going to be a different challenge here.”

He did noted that UMFK offers diversity scholarships and some of them do go to athletes.

Ashby brought three players with him, one who played for him at Brescia last year and two that he recruited for Brescia. And they have played integral roles in the Bengals’ 4-1 start.

Sophomore striker Arnold Lewis, who had nine goals at Brescia last fall, is the leading scorer for UMFK with six goals and four assists. He is originally from Liberia.

Freshman midfield Dwayne Smith from Jamaica is second in scoring with three goals and a team-high five assists and another freshman midfielder, Emlyn Jacoby from South Africa, has four assists.

“We have a good program here. It’s better than I thought it was going to be,” Ashby said. “We have eight guys who can play for the top programs in the country in NAIA.”

His teams had much more depth at the University of Mary and Brescia, but he said, “I think we’re going to do well. Hopefully, we can win our [Sunrise] conference and go to the Region Nine playoffs in Ohio. We might surprise a couple of teams if we make it out there.”

Ashby had just one losing record in his last eight seasons and made the playoffs every year.

His 2001 University of Mary team made the NAIA National Tournament’s Sweet 16.

He said he loves being the athletic director at UMFK.

“I have great people to work with and our budget seems to be adequate,” said Ashby, who is married to the former Pam Flewelling from Easton. The couple has two children.

Prior to leaving Maine, he was the men’s and women’s soccer coach at Maine Maritime Academy and the men’s coach at Husson College and UM-Machias.