PORTLAND – Jim Aylward is, among other things, much quicker to the Gatorade bucket than his players.

The only varsity head football coach Mountain Valley has ever known grabbed the bucket from his bench and made tracks for the sideline with 46 seconds left in the Class B state championship Saturday. His players had lost the privilege of giving the traditional celebratory dousing the week before, aiming so poorly for their coach after the win over Gorham that Aylward had to grab the bucket and give himself the shower.

Aylward’s target was apparently defensive coordinator Ryan Casey. We say apparently because Aylward was swallowed up by about 35 young men in silver and cobalt blue uniforms and quickly disappeared just before raising the orange cooler over his head..

Aylward had been waiting for that moment since before some of his players were born. It was a moment where he found himself surrounded by three coaches who had been with him, in one capacity or another, since he’d helped give birth to a brand new football team for a frustrated football-crazy town..He was surrounded by others he had watched grow up, who he had helped become men, in the classroom and on the football field, including a group of seniors he’d helped through some very difficult times.

Aylward nearly lost the privilege of seeing his seniors through to the last, most memorable game of their lives. After their freshman year, he stopped teaching at Mountain Valley for a position in Rangeley. He still wanted to coach football, but under the premise that Mountain Valley coaches should teach in the Mountain Valley system, some members of the school board wanted to dismiss him.

The players backed Aylward. His loyal coaching staff, Casey, Rick White and Steve LaPointe, told the board they’d have to look elsewhere for a replacement if Aylward was forced to leave a job he didn’t want to leave..

“We went to the school board meeting as a staff and we said that is our head coach. Not us. We want to work for him and the kids want to play for him,'” White said.

The bond between the players and coaches strengthened, but redemption was still a couple of years away.

“Nobody deserves this more,” added White, Aylward’s right-hand man since the program’s inception “It takes a monkey off his back after being told he’d never win the big one. He wanted this for himself, these kids and the past kids.”

Few, if any, of those kids in the past had the special bond he had with the 10 seniors on the school’s first championship team. Not only did they represent the last class he’d taught in the classroom at Mountain Valley, he’d seen them through a turning point in their lives..

Their classmate and teammate, Rob Beadle, committed suicide earlier this year. Aylward allowed the team to grieve and remember Beadle in their own way. Beadle’s No. 22 jersey was laid out on the Falcon bench at every game, and the players held it triumphantly after Saturday’s win.. Players such as Shawn Marr and Tristan Lapointe wore arm bands.in their friend’s memory.

But Aylward never let his players be consumed by their loss. He kept the focus on football and tolerated no excuses, but also allowed his players to maintain their perspective and allowed his team to develop its own personality, a personality which, not surprisingly, reflects his own in a lot of ways. .

“When you’re young, you don’t really understand him. You kind of think the man’s a nut,” said senior Tristan LaPointe. “In some ways he is, but I think he understands what we’re about more than anybody.”

Based on that understanding, Aylward had high expectations for his kids Saturday.

“Before the game, I told them, You’re not perfect kids or anything else, but out of all of the kids I’ve coached, you’re truly the ones where, with the content of your character, it would really disappoint me if we weren’t successful today for you,” Aylward said.

They wouldn’t have even been there if not for Aylward. He did more than teach them how to pour Gatorade, you know.

But he also wouldn’t have been there if not for them.

That’s redemption.