KENNEBUNK — You can call Old Orchard Beach football coach Dean Plante the Godfather of Maine eight-man football. He’d rather deflect the credit, but it’s the truth.

“Let’s give a lot of credit to Mike Burnham and Mike Bisson (at the MPA). They just happened to push me in front of the camera. We believed in it,” Plante said Saturday after his team’s 60-14 win over Stearns gave the Seagulls their second eight-man Small School state title in three years.

When Gold Balls were presented to Old Orchard Beach in the Small School division and Greely in the Large School division on Saturday, Maine’s fifth season of eight-man football came to an end (the 2020 season was scrapped because of the pandemic). There’s no doubt, eight-man football is the best thing to happen in Maine high school sports in the last decade.

“I coached in Class A for 20 years. Football is football. Our kids work just as hard as the kids at Bonny Eagle or Noble when I was there,” said John Suttie, OOB’s superintendent of schools.

It has provided more students across the state the opportunity to play football. Without eight-man as an option, there’s a good chance none of the four schools competing Saturday – Greely, Mt. Ararat, Old Orchard Beach, and Stearns – would even have a football program, much less be playing for a state title.

Heck, Greely was in a co-op program with Falmouth in the seasons leading up to the decision to start an eight-man program in 2022. The Rangers went winless, 0-7, that first season. Last season, they played in the Large School championship game. This season, they won it, beating Mt. Ararat 58-20.

“I’m not a football traditionalist. It’s competitive as all hell. This is a competitive league,” Greely Coach Caleb King said.

The push to add eight-man football to the Maine landscape began a decade ago, Burnham said. It took a few years for schools to realize it was a life saver for programs, not a sign of failure. Plante watched his school’s enrollment shrink, and the roster size with it, and knew something had to happen.

Brady Plante, Dean’s son and the starting quarterback for the Seagulls, watched his dad work to convince the state to give eight-man football a go.

“I mean, he’s a pretty convincing guy. I had no doubt that he would. It’s nice to see programs doing well,” Brady said.

A handful of schools made the jump back to 11-man this season after playing a few years in eight-man. That’s never going to be an option for all schools, and referring to eight-man as a developmental league for programs looking to move back up, as some have, is a disservice to the teams embracing eight-man as a way to keep more athletes involved. There are 200 students at Old Orchard Beach High,
Suttie and Plante said. Eight-man is their home, probably for as long as they have a team.

Could the Seagulls field an 11-man team? Sure, said Plante. But that came with a big caveat.

“We’d struggle. It’s tough. We have 98 boys in the school. We’ve got 27 boys (on the football team), 18 are freshman and sophomores. Would we have consistent success? I don’t know,” Plante said, noting teams like Wells and Winthrop/Monmouth lurking in Class D.

Brady Plante was the starting quarterback as a freshman. He knows in eight-man football, he and other standout players on his team, like wideout Riley Provencher and running back Wes Gallant, would have struggled taking on 11-man varsity competition at that age. He watched as his father went through season after season, trying to cobble together a roster that could make it from August to November.

“When I was a kid, our youth program was always strong, but the high school wasn’t really making big runs in the playoffs, Eight-man gave us a viable option to show what we can do,” Brady said. “I think we could compete in 11-man, but our depth would be an issue. Throw a freshman out there who’s not ready to play, it’s dangerous.”

Eight-man football has been in Maine since the 2019 season. If you don’t embrace it by now, that’s a you problem, Plante said. Put away your yearbook and stop living in the past.

“People that knock it, it’s usually based on ignorance and ego,” Plante said.

Saturday afternoon, Plante’s Seagulls added another Gold Ball to the trophy case. And they worked just as hard for it as the 11-man teams who will do the same next week.