A pair of Lisbon High grads band together to keep the school’s fledgling hockey progam afloat.
By Justin Pelletier
Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Craig Bouchard and J.P. Adams are firefighters. Late in October, both Bouchard, a 1999 graduate of Lisbon High School and now an Auburn firefighter, and Adams, a 2000 grad who works at Brunswick Naval Air Station, received gut-wrenching calls.

“We found out they were going to fold the Lisbon hockey program,” said Bouchard. “Both J.P. and I had played on the team for four years, three together, and we remembered that we almost folded during my senior year. We didn’t want that to happen again.”

What Adams and Bouchard did was spur-of-the-moment. It seemed crazy, but it was the only thing they could have done.

“J.P. called me up and told me, and then he said, ‘Well, how about you and I do it,'” said Bouchard.

“I didn’t want to see the team fold,” said Adams. “I knew that if they didn’t have a coach by Nov. 17, they were going to cancel the program.”

From there, Adams and Bouchard had to work out scheduling with their respective employers.

“I was working at United Ambulance at the time along with my firefighting job,” said Bouchard. “They were nice enough to give me a three-month leave of absence to allow me to take this project on. It was an amazing coincidence that our days off worked that either J.P. or I could be at every practice, and we both make sure that we can always make the games.”

Sooner than expected

There was no doubt in either coach’s mind that they would one day oversee a team of young hockey players, but neither thought the chance would come so soon.

“Of course, once you stop playing, your thoughts go to coaching,” said Bouchard. “Even now, you look at all of the coaching vacancies in the paper, and you think, ‘Hey, I can do that, too.’ When you leave the game, you start to miss it, especially if you’ve been playing since you were four.”

Now, Adams and Bouchard are coaching hockey players who were in eighth grade when Adams graduated.

“You remember some of them playing in middle school,” said Bouchard. “I don’t know how much trouble it would have been for us if there were players that had played at the same time we did, but there was none of that, so we got lucky, I guess.”

Time and knowledge

It may sound strange to mention Adams and Bouchard in the same breath as longtime Class B coaches Scott Rousseau of Falmouth, Greg Matusovich of Yarmouth and even Steve Ouellette of Cape Elizabeth, the defending Class B state champion, but they are now, at least in rank, equal.

“You look around, and it’s really almost intimidating,” said Bouchard. “The normal mold of a coach is to more established, to be older than we are. Now, here we are at 22 and 23 years old, coaching a team of our own.”

Adams and Bouchard aren’t lacking in knowledge. They were two of the better players that Lisbon has seen over the years.

“We have to be able to teach not only hockey and the basic skills, but the systems that go along with hockey,” said Bouchard.

The experience

As for life experience, another critical piece of a coach’s responsibility, Adams is well-versed in that. For several weeks during his junior year, Adams was faced with the prospect of never walking again.

“I caught a groove over by the old Zamboni doors,” said Adams. “I went head first into the boards. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move my left arm or leg.”

It took almost four weeks for Adams to regain movement on his left side, and the incident gave him a new outlook on hockey and life.

“It’s a game, and to deny kids the ability to play the game, to take away an opportunity for them to do something constructive, that’s just wrong,” said Adams. “We didn’t want to have to tell the 15 or 16 kids we have that someone else was giving up on them.”

Next stop…

The last coach at Lisbon, Mike Retelle resigned in the late going after his son Jon transferred to Kents Hill. Adams and Bouchard don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.

“As long as they need a coach, we’ll be here,” said Bouchard. “As long as our schedules keep working out for the better, we are going to make sure that they don’t fold the program because of a lack of a coach.”

The program may not be as storied as those from down the road in Lewiston or at St. Dom’s, but the energy the players expend still produces the same sweat and pain as that felt by skaters at those Class A schools.

“Hey, some of our players have only played pond hockey,” said Bouchard, “but that’s OK They want a place to play, and as long as we can, we’ll make sure they have that chance.”

jpelletier@sunjournal.com