Edward Little Coach Rick Kramer calls a play during an Oct. 11 football game against Windham. Kramer has resigned after leading the Red Eddies for three seasons. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Rick Kramer said the Edward Little High football program had “turned a corner” and was heading in the right direction. So stepping away isn’t easy, but a career change made it necessary.

Kramer resigned this week after three seasons as the Red Eddies’ head coach because he recently accepted the position of Executive Director of the Maine Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (Maine AHPERD). He will be in charge of professional development for teachers across the state, as well as curriculum for health education and recreation in Maine schools.

“Sometimes you think you can satisfy the appetite for all the other things that’s going to take time from you, and that you’ve got all the time in the world,” Kramer said. “You sit back with your spouse and you start analyzing how much time you’re going to spend on different things, and you realize there’s somebody else really that needs a lot of your time, too. It’s you and your spouse. I think it’s time for me to give myself and my spouse and this other work entity the time that I have.”

The Red Eddies went 3-24 during Kramer’s tenure, including 1-8 this past season. He initially spent a season with the program as an assistant for previous coach Dave Sterling in 2016, which made him eager to return in 2022 when he was hired as the head coach.

“Three years ago, I came back because I had a great experience back in (2016),” Kramer said. “I did a year with Coach Sterling, and I worked as a defensive coordinator for him, and I like the kids, I liked what the kids are about. There were some hard kids, some tough kids at the time, and I’m like, those kids, they needed me. We did a great job.”

Kramer said he’s been involved in Maine AHPERD for decades and was approached to apply for the executive director position last summer. After discussions with his family, Kramer said he realized he had more to give than just teaching and coaching.

The hardest part of stepping away from Edward Little football has been the feeling that he’s letting the current players down. He said it’s especially tough because the Red Eddies “just turned the corner,” growing the roster from 30 players three years ago to 65 this season.

The Red Eddies’ next coach, Kramer added, will inherit a program progressing toward success, whether Edward Little remains in Class A or drops to Class B.

Athletic Director Todd Sampson had scheduled a community meeting for Wednesday to discuss a possible petition to move the program from Class A North to Class B North. Sampson announced on social media Wednesday morning that the meeting has been postponed. Sampson later told the Sun Journal that the postponement was due to both Kramer’s resignation and a scheduling conflict that would have prevented Superintendent Susan Dorris from attending.

Edward Little football coach Rick Kramer talks to his team before the Red Eddies’ 2023 season opener against Noble. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

“I think there’s positivity in the future, I think there’s an opportunity for kids to compete, no matter what level we’re at, Class A or Class B,” Kramer said. “But what you have to understand is that kids have to overcome the idea that they don’t have to prepare all year. If you’re going to play Class A football, you have to physically prepare all year long.”

That’s why he encouraged 20 football players to wrestle for Edward Little this winter. Kramer said schools like Noble have entire starting lines of football players who wrestle, and wrestling-specific cross training should benefit the program in the future.

Though the Red Eddies won only three games in three seasons, Kramer said the program showed a lot of growth, especially considering they didn’t have a practice field in 2022 while the new high school and athletic complex were being constructed.

The new field was ready for use last year, but Kramer said the team still had to practice inside the gymnasium once a week because there was no regular practice field.

“I think watching the program develop was great at Edward Little,” Kramer said. “I’m excited because next year there’s going to be a practice field, and they can practice at the same time every day; that’s going to make a huge difference.”

Kramer said he’s thankful to the community, and all the players who committed their time and effort to the program.

“I wish we could have had more wins, but I can tell you toward the end of this year, it was easy to see that we we had turned the corner, because of what would you call the esprit de corps,” Kramer said. “The team was excellent toward the end, and they knew they were up against it. They knew they were trying to do the best job they could, and we had to do things unconventionally sometimes on defense to try to stop anybody.”