WATERVILLE — After 36 years with the Colby College football program, Tom Dexter went out on top.

Dexter, an assistant coach for the Mules, had the honor of serving as head coach April 30, the Mules’ final day of spring practices. At the conclusion of practice, the Mules carried the 61-year-old Dexter on their shoulders and off the turf.

“I gave them a good pep talk at the end, and they hoisted me up,” Dexter said. “That team is really special to me, and it was a great last moment with them.”

It was an appropriate sendoff for Dexter, who, between baseball and football, has been a staple of Colby athletics for the better part of four decades. He is retiring on Thursday to spend more time with his family. 

You have to go back before the fall of the Berlin Wall to find a time Dexter wasn’t coaching football at Colby. He joined coach Tom Austin’s staff in 1989 before becoming defensive coordinator in 1994. He held that position until 2019 before serving as defensive backs and defensive line coach in his final years.

In all, Dexter’s time at Colby spanned four head coaches (Austin, Ed Mestieri, Jonathan Michaeles and Jack Cosgrove). That commitment to Colby football even as those around him came and went, Cosgrove said, was one of his greatest attributes, along with his enthusiasm.

“He’s got a heartbeat that’s just unique, and even though he has a few more years on him now, that still radiates,” said Cosgrove, Colby’s coach since 2018. “What he did for Colby, you just don’t see that level of loyalty to an institution in this day and age. It’s just not as prevalent as it used to be.”

Indeed, Dexter’s all-around passion was infectious throughout the program, Colby linebacker Julian Young (2021-24) said. Young, who recently received an invitation to attend a Baltimore Ravens minicamp, called Dexter “the face of Colby football.”

Defensive back Javon Williams (2019-22) recalled how Dexter stood out to him while attending a football camp at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland in 2017. From Day 1, Williams said, “Coach Dex” was committed to the then-Ellsworth High School senior’s future, something he credited to his rise to becoming team captain.

“It was very much like, ‘Javon, I view you as a leader, and I trust you,’” Williams said. “Even before I got to college, he was always checking in on me and always challenging me to get better. It was a high-trust, high-support relationship. … I think that’s what sets him apart from most coaches.”

Dexter’s presence also stood out on the baseball diamond. He spent 30 seasons with the Colby baseball program from 1989-2018 with 15 of those as the Mules’ head coach from 1992-2006.

Coaching baseball at Colby was not initially part of the plan for Dexter. Yet the program needed help, and Dexter, who would spend countless days meeting with former Colby and University of Maine coach John Winkin and attending clinics up and down the coast, stepped up.

“He was self-taught, pretty much,” said Dale Plummer, a Colby assistant under Dexter and the head coach from 2007-18. “That’s just who he is. If you needed him to coach the bowling team, he’d coach the bowling team; if you needed him to coach squash, he’d learn the game and be an excellent squash coach. He could coach anything.”

Dexter’s tenure as coach included the program’s first-ever Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference playoff appearance in 1998. A 2021 Maine Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, he also helped the development of Babe Ruth League youth baseball in the Oakland area.

“Every year, they went to New Englands,” Plummer said of the Babe Ruth teams featuring Dexter’s sons, Sam and Jake, who were also on Messalonskee’s 2012 Class A state title-winning team. “It wasn’t just Colby; he really gave everything he had to the community in Oakland, too.”

On April 30, Dexter threw out the first pitch ahead of the Colby baseball team’s regular-season finale against Thomas College. That pitch? A perfect strike that prompted cheers from the larger-than-usual crowd at Coombs Field, many of whom were Colby football players.

Now, Dexter is stepping aside to support his children in their careers. There’s Hannah, 33, a nurse; Sam, 31, a pro baseball player for the Atlantic League’s Southern Maryland Blue Crabs; Jake, 28, a former University of Southern Maine pitcher; and Lydia, 26, the women’s lacrosse coach at St. Joseph’s College.

It’s the community that’s kept Dexter at Colby and the central Maine area. Originally from upstate New York, he spent one year each at SUNY-Cortland (his alma mater) and Cornell. Yet when he arrived at Colby at the age of 25, there was no looking back.

“The community here has been great, and then my family came along, and they loved it here,” Dexter said. “I had such great mentors, and it was just a place where I wanted to inspire people. I’ll always consider it home.”