When Chris Albert decided to take the coaching job at Oak Hill last month, it wasn’t just a sudden transition for him and his team.

It was a significant change in culture, leagues and level of play. Albert has been an assistant with Mike McGraw at Lewiston for much of the last decade. To go from a well-established team to a squad in a different league and class, was quite a change.

At a Class A school at Lewiston, Albert was accustomed to having plenty of bodies. If a player was out of shape or not ready to play regularly skill-wise, he could work that player in. It’s a little harder to do that at a smaller program like Oak Hill.

The Raiders have 19 players in the entire program. That’s down significantly from when the club had 40 athletes a few years ago.

Albert is hoping to build those numbers back up, but it is a little different coming from such an established program.

“It’s just a different culture,” he said. “You just have to change the culture a little bit as well.”

The Raiders made the tourney last year, going 7-7-1 and losing in the Western Class B quarterfinals. Oak Hill returns enough talent that another tourney berth could be in the offering, but what Albert wants to do is continue to build the program’s depth.

“It’s important to keep the freshmen going and get more freshmen next year and try to build it,” Albert said. “In a school this size, if you get five or six freshmen each year, you should be OK. It’s a good way to build something.”

Stepping in to replace Chad Drouin at such a late notice, Albert isn’t trying to catch up on what he has in the program, but also what to expect around the league. After coaching in Class A for so many years, Class B is completely foreign to him.

For Kris Wright, the change isn’t as drastic. Wright, who coached at Leavitt last year, has returned to Poland to coach the Knights. He coached the team back in 2007 and 2008 before taking the JV job at Leavitt in 2009.

The Knights went 0-13-1 and 2-12 in his two seasons and won three games last year. With 10 seniors and 10 juniors back, Wright is excited about what is happening with the program.

“I’m glad to be back at Poland and coaching this team,” Wright said. “This program has made progress the past two years, but we still have a lot of work to do to be a competitive team in the Western Maine Conference.”

Impressive numbers

After just two wins last year, the Mountain Valley boys are excited about this year’s potential. Coach Jarrod Dumas lost five regulars to graduation last year and return 14 players, including nine upperclassmen. In addition to those number, the Falcons also have 17 players joining the team this year.

“We hope to take advantage of the enthusiasm that comes with so many new arrivals,” said Dumas, whose team went 2-11-1 last fall.

Monmouth’s program got a shot in the arm as well. Just a few years ago the program barely had enough players. Now the Mustangs have enough to field a junior varsity team this fall.

“This year we have 11 freshmen joining the program,” said Joe Fletcher, in his second year at Monmouth after coaching at Oak Hill. “All have played in the middle school, and we expect them to help us mid to late season.”

The Mustangs are expected to build off last year’s 5-8-1 season. Monmouth has some key players back like Nick Trenholm and Russell Neal in the midfield, Kyle Brown and Drew McFarren on defense and all-star forward Kyle Fletcher, who scored 20 goals last year.

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