AUBURN — There will be a new voice on the sidelines for the Edward Little boys’ soccer team this fall, but it will be a familiar face. Former Red Eddie Tim Mains has been hired as the new leader of a program he once played for.

Mains, a 2011 Edward Little High School graduate, takes over for Matt Andreasen, who took a teaching position in Scarborough after four years at the helm of the Red Eddies. Mains becomes just the third coach in the EL program’s history.

“I’m really excited,” Mains said. “I played soccer for Edward Little five years ago, and to be back there this early definitely wasn’t expected.”

The hire was a quick one after the position was vacated last week. But Edward Little Athletic Director Dan Deshaies said: “We came up with our best man.”

“He’s energetic. All the kids probably that are going to be playing for him watched Tim play in state championship basketball games and watched him play in the playoffs in soccer and baseball,” Deshaies said of Mains. “He’s just a good, young kid. Sometimes you can tell that you have a good coach in hand, and he’s going to be a great coach.”

Mains is also coming off his first season as the JV boys’ basketball coach and varsity assistant at EL. With some of the players on this year’s soccer team having played basketball for Mains, he said having those relationships already in place will be “huge.”

Mains also said he has a “close working relationship” with Andreasen, and he doesn’t expect to change too much from what Andreasen had implemented during his tenure.

The Red Eddies went 5-7-4 last year before losing to rival — and eventual state champion — Lewiston in the Class A North quarterfinals. Edward Little made the playoffs each year under Andreasen. The Red Eddies failed to make the playoffs during Mains’ senior season in 2010 under longtime program patriarch Dave Morin.

“I think the program has moved forward in the right direction a lot since I was there,” Mains said. “I know we missed the playoffs for the first time in forever my senior year, and I kind of had a bad taste in my mouth walking out of there as the team that didn’t get to the playoffs.”

Deshaies said Mains shows “natural instinct when it comes to coaching” and has “a chance to be a very good coach. Sometimes young kids like that need a break.”

Mains has focused more toward basketball since graduating from ELHS. He played basketball for one semester at the University of New England, where he earned his degree. He said the chance to get back involved with soccer was one of the biggest reasons he was excited about his new coaching position.

As far as style, Mains said he wants his teams to possess the ball, and control and dictate the pace of the game.

With “a lot of talent in place,” according to Mains, he hopes to earn that playoff spot in his first year coaching that he didn’t get in his last year playing.

wkramlich@sunjournal.com