By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer

JAY – Peter Brown still knows the score of a milestone basketball coaching victory in 1967.

He can paint the picture of two state championship baseball triumphs in the 1970s as if they happened two Saturdays ago. When prompted, Brown can recite the laundry list of awards he’s won as a small-town coach and administrator.

So you’d expect mementos and framed certificates to dominate the dcor in the Jay High School principal’s office. Instead, visitors notice the computer screensaver depicting a wide-eyed toddler crawling across a living room carpet, or the 20-or-so candid snapshots Brown has proudly taped to the door.

“I have three grandchildren in Massachusetts,” said Brown. “I’m not going to miss seeing those kids grow up. I want to go when I want and stay as long as I want.”

Brown, who will retire at the end of the school year, admits to the usual career-ending apprehensions. He wonders how long it’ll take his biological alarm clock to stop ringing at 4 a.m. And it’ll be an equally restless feeling when 4 p.m. rolls around and there aren’t pitchers to warm up, officials to greet, programs to hand out or substitutions to make.

He devoted 38 years to the development of the next generation, then another, and usually within shouting distance of a playing field.

“The best part,” Brown said, “was building that day-to-day relationship with the kids.”

Title town

Thirty-eight students shoehorned into one room for Brown’s first English class at Woodstock High School in Bryant Pond. It was 1967. Brown, a Peaks Island native, coached basketball and softball. The next fall, teacher and students met at the new Telstar Regional High School.

“I coached the first varsity basketball victory at Telstar. We beat Livermore Falls, 54-48,” Brown said. “We won two games that year and two more the next year.”

Fall and spring spawned better memories.

Brown’s football coaching staff won back-to-back state championships in 1972-73. Baseball brought two more titles in 1974 and ’79. The Rebels enjoyed a 32-game regular-season winning streak during Brown’s run, one that ended at home in a driving rainstorm against Oak Hill.

“We had some memorable battles with Billy Fairchild,” said Brown. “That day, we had cars parked behind the backstop with the heaters running, trying to keep the balls dry.”

As Brown took over the athletic director’s chair at Telstar in 1979, then moved on Jay as assistant principal in 1985, Title IX ignited girls’ extra-curricular activities throughout the country.

Brown received his wake-up call after less than a week as field hockey coach at Telstar, which captured two of the first three Class C crowns awarded in Maine.

“I’d come from coaching football, and I was reluctant to run things the way I did over there,” Brown said. “After two or three practices, they said, Coach, if you’re going to come out here and treat us like girls, we’re not going to play for you.’ That was all I needed to hear. They want to be treated like athletes, and you can get whatever you want out of them.”

Couldn’t stay away

Brown saw the group of core three-sport athletes shrink in recent years as jobs, cars and relationships intervened. Parents also became a bigger part of the equation, some with nobler intentions than others.

“They’re more involved for a lot of reasons,” said Brown. “You have some, I think, who are trying to re-live their lives through their children.”

Sports-crazy Jay was an ideal fit for Brown, who moved there in 1985 intending to steer clear of the X’s and O’s. When longtime athletic director John Taglienti retired in ’86, however, the lack of a clear-cut replacement gave the superintendent a brainstorm.

“He said, You know how to do that.’ My job title changed to assistant principal/athletic director. I couldn’t avoid it,” Brown said.

A similar conversation ended with Brown accepting the field hockey job, saying he’d mind the store until someone else came along. That took a decade, as Brown had a ball with the game he once half-jokingly says he considered “trying to put the puck in the net.” Along the way, he had the opportunity to coach his daughter.

He worked with his son while co-coaching the Tigers’ baseball team with Mike Henry in the early 1990s.

Brown unwittingly adopted dozens of other teen-agers during those coaching stints.

“They place their trust in you,” Brown said. “Kids would sit in my office and talk to me about their lives. That’s the stuff I’ll miss the most.”

Goodbye, for now

Former students have called to wish Brown the best in his job as a full-time husband and granddad, and they date back to his stay in Bethel.

Brown said he recently spoke with Randy Olson, whose son, Garrett, graduated from Oxford Hills and now plays Division II baseball at Franklin Pierce College.

“Randy said, The things you taught us and made us do, I’m still teaching my son.’ And they all tell me I can’t stop working,” Brown said. “They say I need to go on the speaking circuit or something.”

Once connected with almost every MPA sub-committee imaginable, Brown intends to stay on as regional and state meet director for competition cheerleading.

In the fall, he’ll travel to Europe with his wife, Denise, who retired from special education last June and still coaches the Jay tennis team. Then it’s on to Aruba, and who-knows-how-many weekends in the Bay State.

Brown’s successor, John Robinson, will complete the move from Penquis Valley High School in Milo shortly after July 1.

“I have no idea what I’m going to do after I walk down that hill to my house for the last time,” Brown said.

Oh, he’ll be back to watch. And make no mistake: As long as Peter Brown’s “adopted” children’s children and grandchildren are busy accumulating grass stains and floor burns in Bethel and Jay, he’ll never be gone.