Head coach Dick Mynahan the longtime patriarch of the Lisbon football program, has the Greyhounds on the brink of another state title.
By Randy Whitehouse
Staff Writer

LISBON FALLS – One day a week in the fall, Tim Mynahan can look out the window of his Lewiston home and, depending precisely upon when he looks, the wheels will be turning either outside or inside his younger brother’s house.

“Every Sunday morning around 8 in the morning, his whole coaching staff is pulling in,” said Mynahan, “and they’re there sometimes until 1 o’clock in the afternoon.”

During those quiet autumn hours, a quartet of men – the head coach, Dick Mynahan, his trusted defensive coordinator/right-hand man, John Murphy, and two young assistants, Randy Ridley and Stacen Doucette, who went from playing for the elders to joining their braintrust – prepare for the week that is about about to unfold for the Lisbon football team.

“Sometimes, it might be longer than a school day,” said Doucette, a 1992 Lisbon graduate and youngest of the group.

Early outlines will be drawn up for the game plan. Ideas, formations and strategic intricacies will be presented and debated. Scripts will be written for a regimented practice schedule.

Though Mynahan, 58, can draw upon 32 years of coaching, the last 18 as Lisbon’s varsity head coach, everyone has an equal voice on Sundays (and the rest of the week, for that matter). But not a moment is wasted.

“Dick pays a lot of attention to detail,” said Murphy, the defensive coordinator who has coached with Mynahan the longest of the group. “All of the T’s are crossed and the I’s dotted.”

Sharing the load

Some coaches will cross and dot those letters themselves. Mynahan admits he was one of those coaches once, and understandably so.

He came from a coaching family. His father, Timothy Sr., coached baseball at St. Joseph’s School and later was succeeded by Dick and Tim’s older brother. Brother Tim coached with him at Lisbon for many years when both were assistants under Joe Woodhead and after Dick succeeded Woodhead.

“Ten years ago, I did a lot of the preparing on my own,” Mynahan said. “Right now, I have three coaches who work really hard for me. We get along well enough so that we can argue, and that’s important. We try to make sure that there’s a rhyme and a reason to everything we do.”

Mynahan’s assistants appreciate the confidence their boss has in them, as a group and as individuals.

“He’s nurtured us all a little bit and given us a chance to do our thing,” Murphy said.

“He delegates a lot, more and more each year,” said Doucette, a former quarterback who has seen an increased amount of the Greyhounds’ offense delegated to him. “He expects as much of us coaches as he does his players. We’re all held accountable.”

Mynahan holds his players accountable by demanding that they prepare themselves to play at their highest level each game. That means working on strength and conditioning during the off-season. During the season, it means being disciplined on and off the field, putting team first and following the carefully constructed gameplan.

“If you’re a kid that commits to the system, he’ll commit to you,” Doucette said. “He’ll find a way for you to be successful, and if you know that, it makes you work harder for him.”

Like family

The reward for that loyalty and hard work is usually success, often more success than the players ever dreamed they would have. Year after year, even when they have as few as 20 or 22 varsity players, the Greyhounds get the most out of their talent.

“Dick develops his team with what he has to work with, and no matter what he has for players, every day he has a plan,” Tim Mynahan said. “Any kid from Lisbon that has ever gone into a game for him has always gone in there prepared to win a game.”

Mynahan draws every last ounce out of his players by having them believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, whether it’s through the regimentation and repetition on the practice field or the inspirational words he offers during practice or just before game time.

“He says he doesn’t pump us up, but the things he says, it’s hard for us not to get pumped up,” said sophomore receiver/defensive back Carl Grady. “He talks about values and how much the team means to us, and it just gets us ready and pumped up.”

Mynahan appreciates the commitment his players make to their team. He lets them know it, and he doesn’t forget, whether they’re still suiting up for him or not.

“He remembers every player he has,” said Ridley, who played for Lisbon in the mid-1980s and joined the coaching staff as head of scouting four years ago. “It’s great to listen to him and Murph get together and talk about the old times. I love it.”

The players remember them, too.

Doucette said he hears from his former teammates and other former players all the time, and the subject of Mynahan and Murphy will inevitably come up. One former teammate, a Marine, told him recently, “I am what I am today because of Coach Mynahan and Coach Murphy.”

Mynahan and Murphy have been coaching together since 1978, in the latter’s recollection. Murphy also estimates that, in that quarter-century, he’s never seen Mynahan take more pride in a team than the one he’ll lead into Fitzpatrick Stadium on Saturday.

“I think he’s been especially proud of this group because of their commitment and how far they’ve come,” Murphy said. “After last week (in the win over Boothbay), there was a moment there where he almost didn’t know what to say. That doesn’t happen too often with Dick.”

“I think it also brought back some memories of (the last time Lisbon won the state championship in) 1997,” he added. “He sees the same spirit. He sees the same spunk.”

Tim Mynahan sees the same thing when he looks out his front window on Sunday mornings.

rwhitehouse@sunjournal.com

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