On first day of practice, Lewiston goes back to its football roots

Lewiston High School football players run drills during the first day of practice on Monday. The Blue Devills practiced at Lewiston Athletic Park behind the Lewiston Armory.

LEWISTON — As the son of a Lewiston High School football coach, and later as a football player, Kevin Collins virtually grew up at Lewiston Athletic Park.

Collins was a toddler running up and down the hill behind the south end zone when his father, Dick — who is still coaching football at Lewiston four decades later — was leading a team that called LAP home to a state championship in 1978.

Fast forward 16 years to when Collins was a senior captain on the 1994 Blue Devils team that was No. 1 in Class A and hosting South Portland in its first home playoff game in several years. It was also the last LAP would host before the Blue Devils moved to Don Roux Field on the high school campus.

“It was three deep along the sidelines. It was that whole small-town, Friday night atmosphere was back again for the first time in awhile,” said Collins, who helped his father coach Lewiston’s freshman team the last three years. “It’s something I’ll never forget.”

Memories were flooding back for Collins, now the Blue Devils’ line coach, as Lewiston held double sessions at LAP for the opening day of preseason on Monday.

But even though the Blue Devils are going back to their football roots in numerous ways for the 2017 season, there isn’t much time to reminisce. The focus is on the present.

Lewiston enters the season with a mix of transition and stability. The transition involves where it will play as the school begins construction of its new athletic facilities. The varsity football team will spend its preseason practicing at LAP, then practice Thursday nights and play Friday night home games at Bates College’s Garcelon Field — a stone’s throw from LAP. Most practices during the regular season will be held at Montello School.

Head coach Bruce Nicholas, his staff and players are already dealing with the inconveniences of practicing off-campus, such as getting fitted for equipment at the high school before driving to the practice field for the Monday morning session. The other fall sports at Lewiston are in the same boat, too, and started their season at other off-campus spots around the city on Monday.

“We all know as a school what we’ve got going on,” Nicholas said. “We’re just going to have to deal with it for a year, but the end result is going to be a nice field to play on.”

Even the seniors who will never play on the new turf field are prepared to make the best of the situation.

“Not having a locker room is a little different,” senior running back Garrett Poussard said. “I actually like this field a lot better than our old practice field. It’s grass, not dirt.”

“It’s a great opportunity for us to play at Bates,” senior slot receiver/linebacker Sean O’Donnell said. “They have a great facility.”

The Blue Devils have virtually all of their skill position players returning from a team that finished 2-7 last year and are hoping to build off back-to-back playoff appearances in Class A North.

Their goal this year is to host a playoff game and continue building a foundation for a return to the glory days of Lewiston football when it packed the fans into LAP.

“We’ve got new coaches, good coaches who care about us,” O’Donnell said, “so we’re all working to get better and better.”

Those new assistant coaches include former University of Maine punter Jeff Ondish and a trio who played for Lewiston — Collins, Justin Bisson and Spencer Emerson, who was Bates’ defensive backs coach last year.

The coaching staff is eager to renew Lewiston’s football tradition that alums such as Collins and Poussard’s father, Harvey, helped establish, going so far as to wear blue shirts with an acronym — Persistence, Resilience, Intensity, Determination, Excellence (PRIDE) — on the back.

“The kids are ready to go. We’re ready to go,” Collins said. “We’re excited because we’re a young staff. The three assistants are all 40 and under. We’re bringing the energy. The kids are feeding off of that. This morning, they’re dragging their feet and they see us bouncing around, well, guess what, they start to quicken up a little bit.”