The phone rings twice before you hear the voice on the other end. A deep, booming voice that God ordained, it would seem, to belong to a high school football coach.

“Good morning … afternoon … Dick Leavitt speaking.”

Somewhere between the deep breath and the second word out of his mouth, you can picture Leavitt stealing a glance at the clock on the wall – one that read two in the post meridian – and having the same look on his face that every coach gets when the play his team carries out with army-like precision all week in practice turns into six points for the other guys.

Then Leavitt laughs, cracks a joke at his own expense, and you realize that he had it right the first time.

Saturday will be a very good morning for Leavitt and the Brunswick High School football program. At 11 a.m., the ball will go up in the air at Fitzpatrick Stadium, and the Dragons will stand toe-to-toe with the Deering Rams with the Class A championship in the offing.

Yes, for those of you who hibernate during autumn or just returned to Maine and began reading up on high school sports after a 10-year hitch elsewhere, we said football. Not soccer, basketball, baseball or tennis.

That’s the pigskin. Helmets and pads. Gridirons and goalposts. A game that has been as synonymous with Brunswick High as the words “wholesome, family entertainment” with MTV.

Dick Leavitt, a big man with a big football pedigree and a heart twice the size of both, is the director of the feel-good movie of the decade in Maine high school football. And if phone calls were Oscars, the administration at the relatively new school building would need to triple the area of the football coach’s office to accommodate his hardware.

He’s heard from former players and forgotten friends. Newspaper reporters and television news anchors. Radio announcers, rival coaches and men such as Rob Munzing who have worn both headsets.

Munzing, now a sideline reporter for Adelphia, guided Gardiner to back-to-back Pine Tree Conference championships in 1997-98. He called to warn his friend and colleague about the week ahead.

“Rob told me what to expect, and he was right. My head is spinning,” said Leavitt.

He laughed again. Busy beats the alternative.

When Leavitt took over the Brunswick program in the early 1990s, the Dragons weren’t even competitive in Class B. Eight games produced eight one-sided loss in ’94. After being forced to return to Eastern Class A due to its high enrollment in 1997, Brunswick won an average of two games over the next six seasons.

Leavitt’s health hasn’t been exemplary, and anyone who loved football or the mid-coast kids any less would have bailed out long before this summer. But something made him come back.

“We thought we had the potential to be pretty good,” said Leavitt.

Basketball star Ralph Mims’ late-summer decision to come out for football and accept the assignment of starting quarterback intensified those thoughts … and a 21-0 opening-night loss to Gardiner quickly delivered another jolt of reality.

Due to a breakout of skin infections at the school, Brunswick’s second game was delayed three days until a toasty Tuesday afternoon in September. Mims and bruising fullback Phillip Warren shone as the Dragons dropped Thornton Academy, 27-14.

One win became two became nine straight. Then ten. Before the rest of us began believing in them, the Dragons were avenging their loss to Gardiner and winning on the road in Bangor to cement their first championship in four decades and set a single-season school record for victories.

And now everyone wants to speak to the patient architect, a man whose football season traditionally has been over for a month by now.

“I just got off the phone with a coach from Savannah State who wanted to talk about Phil Warren. All I’ve done today is talk about football,” said Leavitt. “It’s been a blast.”

Somewhere amid the ringing and reminiscing, there’s a game to be played.

What a game, at that. Deering has been considered this year’s monolith since the moment last November’s playoffs were etched in the history books.

Other than a Bangor win two years ago, Western Maine’s dominance over the East has been a foregone conclusion since the current Class A state playoff format went into effect in 1987.

There have been bigger underdogs than the Dragons, but you can count them on one of Leavitt’s sizable hands.

“We’ve seen Deering on film, and they look pretty good,” he said.

Know what, though? So does Brunswick.

No matter what time of day it is.

Kalle Oakes is sports editor and can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].