WALES — Oak Hill hadn’t won a football championship of any kind since Rambo ruled the box office, a duet involving Joe Cocker was the No. 1 song in America, and current coach Stacen Doucette was eight years old.
You didn’t think spinning history in a new direction would be easy, did you?
The Raiders co-opted the “find a way” mantra from the Boston Red Sox three months ago, and in the blinding spotlight of November, they did. Oak Hill denied Dirigo, 16-14, in Saturday’s Western Class D final. Seven days earlier the Raiders snuck past Lisbon, 21-20.
That’s three points of breathing room in two pass-the-smelling-salts games. By contrast, when the Raiders rolled to their only (so far) state title in 1982, they didn’t win a game by fewer than 16.
“There’s definitely a lot of competition,” Oak Hill senior quarterback Parker Asselin. “The last two games have been real tough, but we just stuck together.”
Western Class D football ceased to exist shortly after the Raiders’ original gridiron glory days. In this first season of its revival, the small-school segment of the Campbell Conference was stupid good.
Oak Hill lost twice during the regular season. Dirigo beat those two teams — Old Orchard Beach in overtime, then undefeated Winthrop — just to get here.
“Without a doubt it was extremely physical,” said Oak Hill H-back, defensive end and 6-foot-3, 245-pound man-child Luke Washburn. “They have defensive players who love to hit, and they’re good at it.”
But the Raiders plodded along and prospered, in a way that was hard to define.
They lack the football tradition of Winthrop, Lisbon and Dirigo. Since a 47-0 loss to Dexter and the Haines twins in the 1984 Class D state game, the closest the Raiders had made it to the finish line were a smattering of semifinal defeats.
It’s also tempting to say the Raiders aren’t flashy, but for the second straight week the Raiders rode the accurate arm of Parker Asselin and the battle-scarred legs of Alex Mace to the winning points.
Asselin, whose leadership skills and confident gesturing at the line of scrimmage channel a certain NFL quarterback and ESPN documentary darling, found Mace over the middle on fourth-and-7 from the Dirigo 27 for a dagger of a touchdown with eight minutes left.
That, after Mace had been helped off the field more than once thanks to bone-jarring greetings from Tyler Frost, Kaine Hutchins, Heath Hersom, Gavin Arsenault and others.
“We actually ran it three or four times during the game. A couple of times I set Mace up to get smoked, but he came back,” said Asselin, whose 37-yard strike to Mace spelled the difference against Lisbon in the semifinals. “Coach told him at halftime he was going to catch a touchdown before the end of the game, and Coach was right. It’s kind of weird how he knows that.”
Doucette has left an indelible stamp in only two seasons with the Oak Hill program. To say that he was the right man at the right time is about as far out on the limb as calling Bill Belichick a good fit in Foxborough.
He brought Lisbon’s winning tradition along with modern sensibilities and level-headedness. These Raiders never let the highs get too oxygen-deprived. The lows never left them in need of counseling.
When Dirigo and its punishing version of the wildcat offense played keep-away for nearly eight minutes at the start of the game, Oak Hill stood its ground. Only one play went for double-digit yardage. The Cougars were flustered into a pair of penalties, and Dalton Therrien dislodged the football from Hutchins’ grasp in the end zone to keep Dirigo off the board.
“We didn’t stop them,” Doucette said. “We said we’d try to slow them down and make them go long fields, and that’s what we did. They’re a great team.”
Oak Hill did mostly stop Dirigo in the second half, limiting the Cougars to a pair of first downs and a 50-yard TD gallop by Brett Beauchesne. And when the Raiders needed two first downs of their own to seal it at the end, they knew precisely where to turn.
When the Raiders weren’t spraying the Cougars with Mace, they were punishing the heart of Dirigo’s defense with dose after dose of Kyle Flaherty.
It was Flaherty who made the shoestring tackle of Tyler Frost to secure a turnover on downs near midfield with just under three minutes left. And it was Flaherty who marauded the middle seven straight times — primarily behind left tackle Bayley Beaulieu — to run out the clock.
He finished with 34 carries for 194 yards and a touchdown.
“If I’m not mistaken, Kyle Flaherty leads the league in rushing,” Doucette said. “I told him we’re going to run behind our seniors (on the offensive line), and we’re going to run with the best running back in the conference, right at them. Two first downs and the game’s over. We said we were going to do it, and we did it.”
Easy, right?
Wrong. Let’s not forget that Oak Hill was playing Dirigo, which seems to operate by the divine right theory of competing for championships no matter what sports season it is.
“It didn’t have as much to do with the plays that we called or the touchdowns we scored but how we did it together,” Washburn said. “Everybody on the team was playing for the man next to them and not themselves. There’s no way that can beaten, I don’t think.”
Success in Class C or D football is never about the raw number of kids. It’s all about having the right ones.
From the big-play knack of Asselin and Mace to the tireless talents of Flaherty to the matchup nightmare of Washburn to the toughness of Beaulieu to the special teams presence of Kyle Tervo and Adam Merrill to the lockdown tackling of Ryan Stevens and Samson Lacroix, Oak Hill had those necessary parts.
Saturday, and all season long.
“We’re not many, but we are mighty,” Doucette said. “It’s working hard in practice. Those kids won that game August 19.”
Party like it’s 1982, boys.
Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Oaksie72.
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