David Evans has guided high school football teams to state championships in Dexter and Millinocket.

Now he’ll get the chance to build a program from scratch.

The 47-year-old Evans recently was named the first head coach of the fledgling football program at Nokomis Regional High in Newport.

Plans call for the Warriors to begin fielding a sub-varsity team this fall, with plans to eventually compete at the Class B varsity level.

“We’re going to do the best we possibly can to make this work,” said Evans, a social studies teacher at Skowhegan Area High and co-owner with his wife Carol of a gymnastics school, Decal Gymnastics.

“The first thing is to get kids out,” he said. “There’s been interest shown, and now we have to see if the kids are going to be willing to back it up.”

Early signs are promising as more than 30 potential players attended a “meet the coach” night at Nokomis last Thursday. A more formal signup is scheduled for this week.

“The boosters are going to be doing some fund-raising activities on Memorial Day weekend, and we’ll want to see the kids out there,” said Evans, whose position is funded privately by the Friends of Nokomis Football organization.

Evans is a familiar face in Maine football coaching circles. He was the head coach at Dexter for three seasons, guiding the Tigers to the 1987 Class C state championship as well as LTC titles in 1987 and 1989. Evans then moved to Stearns of Millinocket, where he assisted for one season before taking over when longtime coach Art Greenlaw retired. Evans coached the Minutemen for four years, winning state Class C championships in 1991 and 1992 as well as four straight LTC titles.

Evans then moved on to coach at Class A Skowhegan in 1996 and 1997, guiding the Indians to a Pine Tree Conference playoff berth in 1997.

In recent years he has been busy with the gymnastics school, as well as following the athletic fortunes of his three daughters – including Carlee, a senior at Skowhegan who has accepted an athletic scholarship to play Division I field hockey at Siena College in upstate New York.

Evans actually returned to the sidelines last fall, co-coaching a youth league team with another former Skowhegan head coach, Kevin Withee.

“In a lot of ways it’s a coach’s dream,” said Evans of the Nokomis job, “to start a program right from scratch and mold it in the way you’d like to have a program.”

The Nokomis team will practice and play on a field located in Corinna. The Warriors will field three teams this fall, Evans said, a sub-varsity squad at the high school level as well as a seventh- and eighth-grade team and a fifth- and sixth-grade team.

“You go in with an idea of what you want to do,” said Evans of the building process, “and you work through any issues as they come up and deal with them.

“We want to go out and play fundamental program, block and tackle and have fun. If we do that, the rest of it will take care of itself.”

Hersom named to Lawrence post

John Hersom, a former head coach at Morse High in Bath and Messalonskee High in Oakland, has been named the new head football coach at Lawrence of Fairfield.

Hersom, an assistant coach at Lawrence for the last two years, replaces Scott Walker, who stepped down earlier this year after three years of guiding the Bulldogs.

“I look forward to the opportunity,” said Hersom, “and I feel it will be a smooth transition because of having been there. I know the kids and what they’ve been doing the last couple of years, and I’m pretty familiar with the program.”

Lawrence hasn’t made a playoff appearance since 2000 and finished 1-7 last year in the Pine Tree Conference Class A ranks.

Hersom said the Bulldogs won’t have a large nucleus of seniors to lead the team this fall but have several promising football classes on the horizon.

“We’ve got a good junior group of 22 kids,” he said. “Our freshman class had a pretty good season last year, and the eighth-grade group is pretty strong coming in as freshmen.”

Hersom coached at Messalonskee for 11 years, leading the Eagles to seven postseason appearances. He still teaches physical education at Messalonskee.

Emmons bound for Bridgton

Maine’s 2005 Mr. Basketball, Tyler Emmons of Portland, will go the prep school route next fall, opting to attend Bridgton Academy.

The 6-foot-5 forward, who helped Portland win the 2004 Class A state title and reach this year’s Western Maine semifinals, considered several Division II programs, Maine Central Institute, and attempting to walk on at the University of Maine before opting for Bridgton.

Emmons averaged 17.3 points and 16.7 rebounds per game last season for coach Joe Russo’s Bulldogs and was named Maine’s Gatorade Player of the Year as well as Southern Maine Activities Association player of the year.

Morse seeks new hoop coach

Morse High of Bath is in search of a new boys basketball coach after making the decision not to renew Brett Barnes’ contract for next season. Athletic director Brian Hatch confirmed recently that Barnes would not return to lead the basketball program after seven years on the job.

The Shipbuilders compiled a 49-83 overall record during Barnes’ tenure, including 1-17 last winter. Morse’s best regular season under Barnes was a 10-8 finish in 2002-03, when the Shipbuilders finished 11th in Eastern Maine Class A before losing a preliminary-round game at No. 6 Nokomis of Newport.

Morse’s last postseason appearance was in 2004, when the 13th-seeded Shipbuilders lost at No. 4 Bangor 39-33 in a preliminary-round contest.