HEBRON – Hebron Academy alumni returned this weekend for homecoming, and those who hadn’t seen the bucolic 202-year-old campus for a couple of decades probably noticed a number of changes.

Something more familiar for those attending the football game with Evergreen League rival Tilton was the tall, bespectacled man with the booming voice standing on the home sidelines. John “Moose” Curtis is in his 32nd year coaching Hebron football, his 26th as head coach, and while that may make him an old fashioned coach, he is anything but set in his ways.

After all, how many 57-year-old men in their fourth decade coaching football at the same school will wear a do-rag to practice this year. Following a recently established tradition, Curtis will wear one, a Lumberjack green one of course, during the week of practice leading up to the game with arch-rival Kents Hill.

“I don’t know how to tie it yet,” Curtis said with a laugh. “Greg (Gumbs, now a Bates College freshman) was in charge last year. I guess it’s going to be (his younger brother) Jose this year.”

Former and current players, Hebron administrators and opposing coaches describe Curtis as a man who doesn’t take himself too seriously, but gives and demands equal amounts of respect, as a coach who knows when to lighten the mood at practice and when to literally lift a slacking player back into line, and as a chemistry teacher who keeps athletics in their proper perspective.

“What I appreciate most about Moose is his sense of balance,” Hebron athletic director Leslie Guenther said. “He is passionate about football, but also understands how sports fit into the overall context of our entire school program.”

“He never whined when Hebron was down. He just came to each contest and gave a good accounting,” said Norm Walker, a long-time friend and football coach at Evergreen League rival Holderness School in Rye, N.H. “That’s why when he won last year, we all were happy for him.”

Hebron finished 8-0 last year to win the Evergreen League, a five-year-old, 14-team football league made up of independent New England prep schools. It was the climax of a remarkable five-year turnaround that earned the team only its second New England Prep School Athletic Bowl bid in two decades (they faced St. Thomas More School, which is two classes above them, and lost 27-7).

It’s hard to say exactly how many league titles Hebron has won during Curtis’ tenure because early on, independent prep school football in New England wasn’t very well organized. In fact, Curtis and Walker are credited with bringing the schools together.

By Curtis’ own estimate, Hebron has won “four or five” league championships. Curtis isn’t sure what his win-loss record is, either. “I don’t have a clue,” he said. “I’m sure there are more losses than wins.”

Six years ago, the Lumberjacks were 0-8. That was the low point of a slow decline that began after they won their first and only New England championship in 1994. Curtis admits there were times he wondered how much longer he could deal with the frustration, but he said his relationship with his coaching staff has kept him coming back each year.

He defers to his assistants more than he used to and modifies his team’s playing style to its athletic strengths. But, having played line for his Chattanooga, Tenn., high school alongside New England Patriots Hall of Famer John Hannah, the 6-foot-4 Curtis stays in touch with his roots and continues to work closely with his linemen.

“You can make linemen,” he said. “It’s really hard to make a back or something.”

“You’ve got to be a hard worker. You can’t be slacking off any,” said post-grad Adam Kidder, a two-way lineman from Gorham. “He’s very fun to work with. He accepts any ideas.”

Kidder described Curtis as laid back on the sidelines, but his players know there will be consequences if they don’t respect their coaches or the game.

“He would never be disappointed in a team that fought their hardest and lost,” said Geoff Bigley, a former lineman with the Class of 1992, “but you’d never want to return to practice on Monday knowing we left something on the field as a team on Saturday.”

“It’s like a switch flips,” said Andy Stephenson, the Lumberjacks’ defensive coordinator who was a two-way lineman on the 1994 championship team. “I can remember one time I was out of line and he picked me up in full equipment off the ground.”

One of Stephenson’s teammates was Sean Morey, who is now a special teams stalwart on the Pittsburgh Steelers and is the best player Curtis says he ever coached.

Over the years, Hebron has imported a lot of talent from out of state, including Morey and the Gumbs brothers. But Curtis, a Rhode Island native who, with his wife, Trish, has raised two daughters in Maine, still has a special place in his heart for the local students who suit up for him.

“They didn’t always have a whole lot of success,” he said, “but they love playing football, and they love being outside. They’re hard workers. You always need some Maine boys on your teams to set the tone.”

Curtis, who is also an academic adviser to some of his players, likes the fact that he can set the tone for them beyond the field or the classroom.

“One of the advantages that the people that coach here have is that we live with the boys and we teach the boys. If a player has a rough practice and I get on him, I can go up to his dorm afterwards and make sure we’re on the same page. So they get to know us very well on and off the field,” he said. “I like it when I have some of my football players in class, because they know they can’t coast. We’re looking at the big picture here.”

For 32 years, it’s a picture that has included an unmistakable big man with a booming voice, occasionally wearing a do-rag.