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Wes Littlefield looks around and sees neighboring towns with school enrollments about the same or slightly higher than his and admits to being just a tad envious.
Many of those towns’ schools, such as Waterville, Winslow and Nokomis of Newport, have football teams playing at the Class B level while others, like his, Mt. Blue of Farmington, and Lawrence in Fairfield are Class A.
“We’re all pretty much in the same group in terms of enrollment,” said the head football coach at Messalonskee High School in Oakland. “We’re actually a Class B team in terms of enrollment right now.”
That’s not to say Littlefield is looking for pity, or even bemoaning his situation.
“We’re the little kid on the block in this league, but we know that and we take pride in that,” he said. “We like playing Class A and we want to earn the respect we get.”
The Eagles have 38 players, not including freshmen. Seven starters return on each side of the ball.
“We’re missing a few key players, but we think we have the young players to step in,” Littlefield said. “I have 21 kids rotating in right now, so we still haven’t found a lot of starters. In a lot of positions, they’re still fighting it out and that’s made for an intense preseason.”
After missing the playoffs last season, the Eagles hope to put the lessons learned from 2007 into play this year.
“We played everyone tough last year except Lawrence,” said Littlefield. “We’ll have some growing pains on offense still, but this is our third year with the double wing so it should be a lot smoother, especially with the senior leadership we have.”
Defensively, the Eagles appear to be quicker and more versatile.
“We can line up in different sets on defense to help our kids out and make them more competitive,” Littlefield said. “We’re a lot faster on defense this year than we have been in the past. We’re a very aggressive defense anyway, but I think our defensive speed will allow us to close the gaps quicker.”
Littlefield expects his team to learn and improve as it goes, and the Eagles have a tough schedule to start out, but he doesn’t think they can afford to lose too many games early.
“We’ll find out a lot about our team early because we open with Bangor and then play Lewiston and Skowhegan,” he said. “We play three of the best teams in the PTC, but it’s very hard to go 0-3 and then try to turn around your season, especially in this league.”
MESSALONSKEE EAGLES
2008 results: 2-6
Head coach: Wes Littlefield,
Key players: Chris Pelletier, TE-CB, Sr.; Eric Caron, TE-OLB, Sr.; Kyle Grover, OC-DT, Sr.; Andy Breton, WB-OLB, Sr.
Outlook: The Eagles are young at some positions, but a veteran team overall with 14 returning starters. The vagaries and nuances of the double wing offense have been figured out after two seasons of experience with it and the defense will be as aggressive as it usually is. A very competitive preseason in which Littlefield had yet to name starters for 10 positions just before the final exhibition game should pay off as the Eagles’ schedule is brutal early on.
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