Charlie Burch didn’t have a grand plan to turn lacrosse into his life’s passion, but he knew he’d found a game he liked when he first tried the sport in his early high school days.

“My dad was a football, baseball coach, and I was a horrible baseball player so I stopped playing that sport and picked up a lacrosse stick,” Burch said. “This was another physical sport where you put a helmet on, so I did fall in love with it right away.”

More than 50 years later, Burch’s love of lacrosse hasn’t wavered.

The Kennebunk resident, who turned 71 on June 10, recently finished his 13th season as the University of New England men’s lacrosse coach. It was Burch who essentially created the still thriving Cape Elizabeth High boys lacrosse program in 1986, winning nine state titles in 12 seasons, including eight straight in the old Maine Interscholastic Lacrosse League (MILL) from 1990-97. Burch was a statewide force, pushing and prodding other schools to take up the sport so it could be recognized and sponsored by the Maine Principals’ Association, which happened in 1998. He also coached at Kennebunk High for 12 seasons from 1998-2009.

Burch will become the first coach from Maine to be inducted into the National Interscholastic Lacrosse Coaches Association (NILCA) Hall of Fame, on Oct. 18, in Jericho, New York, as part of the NILCA’s seventh hall of fame class.

“I think part of the reason those guys decided to reach out and consider me after all those years being out of the high school game is what I was able to do, being somewhat of a driving force to getting it to being an MPA sport,” Burch said. “We were able to establish a playoff system. To get more schools to take it on as a sport.”

Burch added, “I felt anything I could do to help grow the game in the state, I was willing to do.”

John Kenney, the NILCA’s director of operations and chair of its hall of fame, said Burch’s “willingness to mentor other coaches as well as his ability to coach the X’s and O’s is the type of coach every high school would want.”

Ben Raymond succeeded Burch as Cape Elizabeth’s varsity boys lacrosse coach and has guided the Capers to 14 state MPA championships. Raymond was a sophomore on Burch’s first team (which won four games) and helped Cape win its first championship the next season with a 14-1 record when titles were based on the regular season. He also was an assistant coach under Burch.

Raymond says those early pre-MPA championships “one hundred percent” count as real titles.

“Lacrosse would be different in Maine without Charlie, and in Cape Elizabeth it surely would be different. He was the guy who started the tradition that lacrosse is one of the things Cape Elizabeth is known for. Lighthouses and lacrosse,” Raymond said. “For so many years I would be more relieved when we won than I was excited. That was the kind of pressure I felt following him.”

Burch grew up in Exeter, New Hampshire, playing football as his first sport, then attending New Hampton (New Hampshire) Prep where he played football and began to grow as a lacrosse player. After playing both sports at Colby College, Burch began his teaching career — American history was the primary subject — at Oxford Hills, where he was an assistant football coach. He continued to play lacrosse on a men’s team and had a stint as an assistant coach at Bates College.

He came to Cape Elizabeth by chance. Working as a basketball referee, he overheard then Cape Athletic Director Vic Woodbury say he was looking for coaches for the spring. Turned out Cape had a club lacrosse team that was going to be a varsity team for the first time in 1986, with a schedule full of established prep school teams.

“The first year was a tough year. We won four games. I’d been hired only a month or so before the season started, and that was tough,” Burch said. “By the second year we were able to say, this is how we’re going to do it.”

Stressing conditioning — players didn’t bring their sticks for the first week of practice in 1987 — and stick skills, Burch and his upstart Capers rose fast.

“We learned at an early age, this is a really easy game to improve at,” Raymond said. “Have a stick in your hand an awful lot and you’ll improve. We played a ton.”

Burch has lived in Kennebunk with his wife, Miriam Myers-Burch, since 1985. The first year of MPA play, Burch began a 12-year stint coaching at Kennebunk High, where his two stepsons, Nick and Pat Myers, went to school. Burch had met their mother when both were teaching at Massabesic High.

“It made sense from a family perspective,” Burch said. “I missed coaching Nick, but I did coach Pat my first two years.”

Nick Myers played at Springfield College and is the men’s lacrosse coach at Ohio State. Pat Myers played at Ohio State and is Lafayette College’s head coach.

Burch often took Nick and Pat with him to Cape Elizabeth playoff contests.

“Pat and I rode the bus to maybe six of those state championship games,” Nick Myers said. “I can remember what the locker room looked like, the eye black going on, the Led Zeppelin. It felt like every year we rode the bus to with our stepfather to the state championship.”

Myers said he never viewed Burch as a stepfather. Rather he was a mentor and one of his four parents, all of them educators.

“He’s a humble warrior. That’s the way I would describe Charlie. He loves the game and I respect the hell out of him for that,” Myers said. “The body of work and impact he’s made in Maine lacrosse is second to none.”

Burch is unabashedly proud of his stepsons’  lacrosse accomplishments. He is quick to point out both were named conference coach of the year this spring, Nick in the Big Ten, Pat in the Patriot League.

But when he’s asked, half-jokingly, if the brothers have passed him on the lax coach success ladder, Burch pauses for a beat or two before answering.

“Um, probably in some ways, I’m sure. But we still talk all the time and we talk the game,” Burch said. “But they’re two of the best young coaches in Division I so, probably, ‘Yes,’ would be the answer to that question.”