DIXFIELD — You can’t credit this year’s Dirigo High School football team with putting the sport on the map in its close-knit community. There was a gridiron history when their fathers and even granddads shuffled through the system.

It isn’t far off, though, to compare the seniors’ rapidly growing list of accomplishments to rebuilding a proud mom-and-pop store in the Wal-Mart age. Dirigo football wasn’t merely downtrodden in the rugged, tradition-rich Campbell Conference. Try dormant, for more than a decade.

“I’ve looked up at the banners on the wall in the gym, and I think there’s one from 1970-something,” said Dirigo senior running back and defensive back Tyler Chiasson. “And it was Class D. And it was co-champions.”

Dirigo shared that 1975 small-school crown with Boothbay. There was a titanic, three-year stretch spanning the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, too, when what was then known as Dixfield High strung together titles in 1962, ’63 and ’64.

But not a pigskin was kicked nor a chin strap buckled here throughout the 1990s. Declining participation and the perceived costs made football a casualty during that era’s economic downturn. A weathered scoreboard and rusting goalposts were the sole evidence apart from the trophy case that a gridiron ever existed at Harlow Park.

Even when local parents who’d played the game started a youth program for the second generation before the Y2K switch, the elementary school players felt like it was a giant tease.

“When we were little, we all figured we’d have to switch to soccer sooner or later,” said quarterback and safety Nic Crutchfield.

What happened between the pitter-patter of little cleats and Chiasson, Crutchfield and company becoming the big men on campus was a nearly perfect progression not even the boosters and builders would have dreamed up.

There was a two-year stint as a cooperative team with neighboring Buckfield. Then, a season of Dirigo flying solo and taking its lumps from renewed rivals Jay, Livermore Falls and Winthrop.

Doug Gilbert’s current four-year tenure as head coach has followed a graph that would make an economist giddy: 4-5 in 2006; 5-4 and kept out of the postseason by a coin flip in ’07; 8-2 and a home playoff game in ’08; 3-0 and averaging just under 45 points per game as the region’s consensus favorite this fall.

“I spent the offseason looking through all the old newspapers, and I have a record of just about every football game Dirigo High School has ever played. Back in the ’60s there was a team that was 8-0,” Gilbert said. “But we know they haven’t had an undefeated team in over 40 years. What we’re doing is trying to develop a history here.”

Dirigo travels to Jay tonight for a rematch of the game last September that helped underscore the Cougars’ resurrection as a program.

That junior-dominated team started its season with back-to-back road wins over Lisbon and Jay, sweeping those two traditional powers for the first time in the same autumn since the early 1980s and the days of Mountain Valley Conference football.

Everyone else’s expectations were modest for that upstart squad, which ultimately lost at home to Lisbon in the Western Maine semifinals. Now armed with the largest crop of seniors and returning starters in the league, Dirigo has worn its status as anointed ones well.

“We were excited for football season as soon as football season ended last year,” said senior split end and cornerback Alex Miele. “We prepare ourselves year-round. Football will be back here for a while, definitely.”

“There was a handful of us who got together every day all year long working out and running,” added Mason Cote, a four-year starter and two-way lineman. “When we made the playoffs, that was big for us. We knew then that we could do it.”

Continuity has been Dirigo’s greatest ally in building its program essentially from scratch.

Crutchfield, Chiasson, Miele and Kyle Hutchinson were among the group that first suited up together in grade school. Cote, who half-joked that he liked the idea of getting to hit people, joined them in seventh grade.

Gilbert made the commitment to follow this year’s seniors for their entire four-year run and hasn’t wavered.

“When I first got here, there was no playbook. There was no watching film,” said Gilbert, also the school’s wrestling coach. “They would all just go out as individuals. Now we have that team attitude. Nobody has to do it all. We’ve made them into football players.”

“I’m really glad we haven’t had any coaching changes,” Hutchinson said. “We’ve learned to love those guys.”

Much as the community has embraced a team with promise to join girls’ and boys’ basketball and wrestling in Dirigo’s championship heritage.

“It’s all about the kids (who come to the games). They love it,” Crutchfield said. “We all do.”

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