Greely Football Coach Caleb King on Rebuilding the Rangers

Four years ago Greely didn't have a football team. The Rangers were in a co-op with Falmouth, and 2018 was the last season they'd played on their own. Since then they've restarted the program in 8-man, won the 8-man title, moved up to 11-man, and won Class C in their first year there. Head coach Caleb King, a 2011 Greely graduate, explains how the program got from there to here.

In this episode:

• Rebuilding from nothing: 26 players and an 0-7 season in 2022, then 44, 40 and now 55, with only 26 of those 55 back from last year's roster
• How players pushed to end the Falmouth co-op, and what a combined Greely-Falmouth team might have looked like in the year both won state titles
• Taking the program one year at a time in 8-man: a loss to MDI in the state game, then the title, and the "straight face test" of showing up to 8-man games with 44 players
• Why moving to 11-man was more about getting JV players on the field than about competition, and not chasing classification up or down
• Moving from 8-man to 11-man: keep the language and the identity, add two tackles and a skill player, and don't overhaul the scheme
• What 8-man allows: formation-based eligibility, centers who can catch passes, and how 8-man players get overlooked for postseason honors
• Going straight into a head coaching job with no assistant experience, the coaches at Husson who shaped his approach, and why meeting kids where they are works better than old-school yelling
• Building from the bottom up: a youth program large enough to split its 5/6 tackle team, shared terminology and technique from youth through high school, and a middle school head coach who also works with the varsity
• Getting high school players to show up at youth games, including a reigning conference player of the year on the field at 8 a.m. playing sharks and minnows
• The case for quarterback Luke Piper, on and off the field
• The developing rivalry with Leavitt: last year's state game, this year's Week 2 rematch, and why a loss in Week 2 is better than a loss in the playoffs
• What he'd do in charge of the MPA for a day: replace conference awards with class-based ones, build a central stadium off I-95 near Newport with a retractable dome, and have the MPA publish its own power rankings
• A look ahead to Saturday's game at Medomak Valley, the last game of Medomak's five-week gauntlet

Also in the intro:

• The team-gear chain reaction is still going: gear from Old Orchard Beach, then Hermon, and more on the way
• The best logo in the state belongs to Greenville, and a one-of-a-kind Greenville shirt that isn't for sale (Greenville, please start selling them)
• Two episodes a week now: Overreactions on Mondays, a statewide look at the weekend, and a deep dive with one guest on Thursdays
• Subscribe wherever you watch or listen. It really does help.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Saturday's Greely–Medomak Valley game is on LCTV.