Eric Cobb wanted to get back coaching high school kids.

When Dan Campbell left Edward Little to become the interim head men’s and women’s cross country and track and field coach at the University of Maine at Farmington, the Red Eddies needed to fill the Nordic ski team coaching position.

Cobb thought it would be the perfect opportunity to return to his alma mater.

“Well, I have been a coach in different sports off and on pretty much my whole adult life,” Cobb said. “From baseball, soccer — I started up a soccer program and a baseball program at my son’s school. I coached the Edward Little Nordic ski team back in the 80s for a year. I coached Oxford Hills’ middle school Nordic team two years ago. I really enjoy dealing with the kids and teaching them the finer points of skiing and, like I said earlier, I am really into endurance sports.”

When Cobb started skiing in high school, he was more into Alpine skiing, but did some Nordic skiing as well. He has really gotten into Nordic sports in particular in the past 10 years.

“I just ski on a regular basis,” Cobb said. “I didn’t go to college, I didn’t go to the Olympics, I didn’t do anything like that. You aren’t looking at a glory piece here. I am just somebody who’s into endurance sports, likes skiing and being outside.”

After a few weeks of practice, Cobb said there’s not much difference he has seen so far between high school kids today to high school kids from the 1980s. The lone difference is that, with the advent of cell phones and the evolution of personal computers, it’s much easier to communicate with kids.

He also said you have to figure out what motivates them and know what buttons to press to get the best out of them. That’s what he really enjoys about coaching

“High school kids and middle school kids, they are pretty much the same,” Cobb said. “I am pretty excited to be at the high school level. I enjoyed the middle school kids, but I really enjoy coaching kids that really want to be there. Particularly the kids that are on the team this year. We got a very small team; I’ve only got six kids on the team. But, you know, they are all really excited. They are really interested, they are all really willing to put in the work and learn what we need to learn in order to perform.”

Currently the Red Eddies have just enough girls to form a team at competitions, but on the boys side, the Eddies will be skiing for individually and not as team.

“They all realize they are just doing this and they are probably not going to win any state titles, or they aren’t going to win anything like that,” Cobb said. “They can all improve and they all can get fit — we can have some fun. My goal this year is to be let it be known through the school: Hey, we are working hard and we are having fun, too. This may be a team you might want to tryout next year or the year after.”

nfournier@sunjournal.com