The mental picture of an offensive lineman, even in high school football, is universal.

We see five guys getting ready to dig their calves the size of tree trunks into the turf. Their shoulders and forearms appear carved out of granite, even as a generous gut hovers over their belt line. And they’re usually snarling, as evidenced by the steam emanating from behind their facemasks on a Friday night this time of year.

With few exceptions, that artist’s rendering and the related story are complete fiction in Maine. If there’s a word that best describes the local front fives that ply their trade in the trenches each weekend, that adjective would be “lopsided” or “uneven.”

Even in a time when teenagers grow bigger, sooner, than ever, most area coaches are starting a center, a guard, or even a tackle who is physically smaller than a trombone player in the marching band.

“We all wish we could have all 200-pound kids with speed and strength, but let’s face it, you’re not going to get that in Maine high school football,” said Mt. Blue coach Gary Parlin. “You don’t get five guys like that at the same time up here, I guess unless you’re Lawrence. Their guards are bigger than our tackles.”

The contrast between the players with the classic, lineman’s build and their unconventional neighbors is striking.

Leavitt lines up 175-pound Mitch Cobb at guard, surrounded by tackles Zach Renaud (325 pounds) and Doug Nash (6-foot-5, 260).

“For the way we play, we want our guards to be pretty good athletes,” said Leavitt coach Mike Hathaway, whose Hornets were one of the early converts to the fashionable spread offense. “We need them to be a lot quicker. We do so much pulling and trapping that it’s almost like the Wing-T in that way.”

Lisbon starts a sophomore, John Crafts, who is listed at less than 150 pounds. Mountain Valley’s 300-pound tandem of Kenny Grant and Ryan Laubauskas outweighs starting center Brian Cogley by triple digits.

Lewiston lists its junior center, Jake Tanguay, at 175 pounds, but coach Bill County estimates that the truth might be closer to 160. And Edward Little moved 5-8, 180-pound Grady Burns from fullback to its offensive line this fall.

The paucity of prototypes hasn’t been a handicap. Mountain Valley, Leavitt, Lewiston, Lisbon and EL enter this weekend with a combined record of 36-4.

“We’ve had kind of a legacy with that. Before Jake we had Alex Pare, who also was undersized,” County said. “They’re intelligent kids, in the weight room all the time, doing all the right things. Sometimes your body’s just not ready to grow.”

Hathaway has made a habit of sculpting his most successful linemen out of fullbacks and tight ends.

Jonathan Pirruccello (University of Maine), Ryane Staples (Colgate) and Mike Austin (Husson) all made the transition and parlayed it into collegiate success. Pirruccello, now a starting defensive lineman at Maine, was a tall, lanky receiver until the start of his junior season.

“When we get guys who come up and say, ‘I play fullback,’ we’ll say, ‘Not in this offense.’ When Jon was a junior, we didn’t use a tight end in every formation, and we realized it didn’t make much sense to not have one of our best players out there on every snap, so we moved him to tackle,” Hathaway said. “I think that probably helped prepare him for what he’s doing now.”

Leavitt and Mt. Blue both utilize the shotgun formation almost exclusively in their offenses, meaning that the center needs to be someone athletic enough to deliver the snap on every play. Recent graduate Kyle Youland filled that bill as a three-year starter for the Hornets, even though he barely taxed the scale at 160 as a sophomore.

While Zach Tracy encountered trouble making that upside-down delivery to Mt. Blue quarterback Ryan Backus, his 5-8, 170-pound frame actually was ideal for a midseason move to guard. Tracy starts there alongside Mike Letarte, a 280-pound tackle.

“Our offense has just improved so much with (Tracy) there,” Parlin said. “So much of what we do is pulling and trapping that now I wonder what might have been if we’d played him at guard all year.”

County has been coaching technique over brawn to his linemen ever since his days as the boss at Leavitt, where he groomed a lean skier named Marty Beale into the anchor of an offensive line that shared in a 1995 Class B championship.

“He probably had two percent body fat or something like that,” County said. “He was intelligent and ornery.”

The coach sees some of those traits in Tanguay and Ben Wigant, a starting tackle who is still growing into his body as a 200-pound sophomore.

“We joke that it’s in the French-Canadian blood. We get a lot of hockey player bodies,” County said. “I tell them it’s a lot like basketball. We coach that you need to put your body between your man and the ball. Even at 160 pounds, if a guy’s trying to run over you, you’re an obstacle if you have good instincts and stay low.”