He’s a coach’s son. A coach’s dream is to coach a coach’s son.

Robie Leavitt is a coach’s son. His father, Dick, was first one of the greatest offensive linemen in the history of Bowdoin College, then a New York Giant, then a teacher and head football coach at Brunswick High School for years. He’s just joined Bill County’s staff at Lewiston, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more universally liked and respected man in Maine high school football.

That’s one big reason he’s a coach’s dream. There’s another big reason – him, from head to toe, and at 6-foot-4, 290 pounds (and a surprisingly nimble 290, at that), he’s a football coach’s nirvana. You can teach a lot of things in football, but you can’t teach size, which is why Robie is heading to Division III Curry College in the fall.

Well, that’s part of the reason. There’s more to it than that.

First of all, he’s a cracker jack long-snapper, probably the best in the state. At a Colby-Bates-Bowdoin skills competition, he was the fastest and most consistent long-snapper by far. Scoff if you like, but in football, a good long-snapper is like a good left-handed reliever in baseball – always in demand.

But there was a time, in spite of his size and skills, when Robie wasn’t a coach’s dream. He always loved football, but he was also a big, frustrated, often angry kid. Oak Hill football coach Bruce Nicholas remembers meeting Robie when he was in middle school. He was, of course, impressed by the youngster’s pedigree, but he also wondered whether Leavitt would ever play football at Oak Hill.

“He wasn’t doing all that well at school, and he had a lot of tough things going on,” Nicholas said. “I think because of his size, a lot was expected of him at a young age, and I don’t know if he was ready to handle it.”

“He was tough to coach at the beginning,” he added. “He had a temper, and if he did something wrong, he’d get down on himself, down on others.”

Leavitt wasn’t much better in class as a freshman. He had anger issues and a learning disability that affects his reading and writing comprehension skills precipitated enrollment into some special education classes.

“Someone else reads it, I do fine,” he said. “If I read it, unless it’s a playbook, I don’t do too well.”

“He took his whacks for quite a few years. I bet there were times he was ready to say, To heck with this,'” Nicholas said.

Leavitt knew he couldn’t give up if he wanted to keep playing football. It helped that between the game and math class, Leavitt spent about half his day with Phil Prideaux. Prideaux, an algebra and geometry teacher and the Raiders’ defensive and line coach, demanded discipline during and after school. He made Leavitt focus in the classroom and encouraged him to take his frustrations out on the football field. He and Nicholas dreamed one day that football would start Leavitt’s maturing as a student and a person until something else, something bigger, perhaps the chance to go to college, would be the light at the end of the tunnel.

Football was always the carrot, but over time, Leavitt learned that it was about more than football. Improved grades led to more mainstreaming. More mainstreaming led to more confidence but new challenges, like advanced English courses and varsity basketball.

“I knew he had the desire, and I knew he’d work for it,” Prideaux said.

“At the senior banquet, they had photos of everyone in the ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th grade,” Nicholas said. “I looked at Robie’s, and I could see those eyes change from ones with a little bit of anger in them to ones that were a lot more calm, more focused.”

Dick Leavitt knows from personal experience when football and football coaches have made a difference in a kid’s life. But that was mostly from the football coach’s perspective. From a parent’s perspective, he said he owes Nicholas and Prideaux a great deal.

“They always treated Robie as more than just the number on the back of his jersey, he said. “Sometimes today, especially with young coaches, they become consumed with winning and lose track of the fact that they ARE developing our sons and daughters to become future leaders of our country, but coaches Nicholas and Prideaux, they never lost track of that.”

Nicholas and Prideaux deflect the credit. Prideaux says, “Having his father around didn’t hurt, that’s for sure. Robie has modeled himself, I think, after his father, and he’s working very, very hard at that.”

By the end of his four years at Oak Hill, a troubled youngster had indeed begun modeling himself after his father, on and off the field. He was able to attract the attention of a number of Division III schools. Curry, winners of three-straight New England Football Conference championships, stood out. Leavitt and his father visited, coach Skip Bandini liked the coach and the coach’s son, told them about the university’s PAL program (Program for Advancement of Learning, a well-known support program for college students with learning disabilities) and invited Robie to enroll and try out for football as a freshman. He’ll probably make a fine starting guard one day, though he’ll likely get his foot in the door first by long-snapping.

This weekend, the Leavitts traveled to Massachusetts, to the Shriners Classic, the equivalent to the Maine Shrine Lobster Bowl. There, Robie picked up a $1,000 scholarship, the Darren Gallup Memorial Scholarship, from Bandini.

A gregarious, articulate young man who inherited not only his father’s size but his self-depreciating sense of humor, Leavitt will enter Curry with an undeclared major but every intent of following in his father’s footsteps and become a teacher and a coach.

He is a coach’s son.

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]