It’s with a ‘heavy heart’ that Descoteaux steps down

BIDDEFORD — Scott Descoteaux says that if you were to cut him open, he’d “bleed black and orange.”

It’s easy to see why. Descoteaux grew up in Biddeford playing football, and has been a part of the Tigers’ high school coaching staff for the last 14 seasons, including the head coach for the past six.

All of which made his decision to step down from the position this week one of the most difficult of his life.

“It’s with an extremely heavy heart because I love it here and I’ve been treated amazing,” Descoteaux said. “I don’t know if there’s a lot of other coaches out there who live in the community that they coach in and coach in the community that they grew up in. To me there’s no other way. Biddeford and Biddeford football has been a major part of my life for 31 years now.

“You just reach the time where it’s time for something new and it’s time for something different, and that’s where I’m at. I have a lot of emotion and some wonderful memories, but it’s the right thing.”

Descoteaux, currently a full-time physical education teacher at Biddeford High School, said he’s leaving the position for a variety of reasons, one being so that he could spend more time with his two young sons.

Descoteaux also holds a master’s degree in educational leadership and hopes to find a job in school administration, which wouldn’t leave enough time to also be a head football coach, which he called a “12-month job.”

“I very easily could continue to coach for a long, long time,” Descoteaux said. “I just believe that there’s something out there that’s worth pursuing, and that for myself and my family and everybody involved, this is what I should be doing.”

Though he doesn’t currently have an administration job lined up, Descoteaux said due to the nature of those job openings, which become available in the late spring and summer, it was best he resign as head football coach now so that if an opportunity did present itself, he wasn’t leaving the Tigers without a coach so close to the start of a new season.

“All this is going to do is give me the ability to look at what options are available to me and not to feel bad that if I do get a job in June, and that’s the direction that I want to move in, that I’m not letting my kids down,” he said. “It would be very difficult for me to feel good about pursuing a future endeavor at the expense of leaving this program in dire straights.

“At this time I feel like there’s ample time to find a replacement for me. If there’s anybody stuck holding the bag, it will be me, and that leaves me most comfortable.”

While he’s sure he’s making the right decision, Descoteaux added that it was hard to rationalize to his team that he was stepping down as coach while remaining as a teacher at the school.

“How do you explain to a kid that you’re leaving the position for a job that you don’t even have? It’s hard,” he said. “But if I was to walk out in June for another position and leave those kids high and dry, that would violate everything I tried to teach them.”

On the field, Descoteaux’s teams were 23-28 during his six years at the helm, making three playoff appearances and going 7-2 in 2010.

Despite conceding that his teams “haven’t won as much as I would have liked,” Descoteaux said he has “no regrets,” and that the wins and losses weren’t the only part of being a head coach.

“You work as hard as you can to win, and that’s very important, but nobody right now could tell me what the score was in the Scarborough game in 2007. Nobody remembers,” he said. “It isn’t the wins that really are the measuring stick or what you end up feeling is your legacy, it’s the relationships with these kids.

“That’s the thing that I think I’ll reflect back on, the people. That’s something that has meant a lot to me.”

Though the Tigers have had a pair of consecutive losing seasons the last two years, including going winless in 2011, Biddeford Athletic Director Dennis Walton emphasized that the move had nothing to do with football.

“Scott Descoteaux is arguably the best coach that we have in this school system,” Walton said. “If he went 2-6 every year for the next 10 years he’d still be the head coach at Biddeford High School. He’s a quality guy, he does things the right way, he expects kids to do things the right way and he’s going to be quite a loss.”

Walton and school Principal Britton Wolfe have already started the search for Descoteaux’s replacement, with Walton saying that the most important aspect would be finding a coach who, “Philosophically is on the same page with the athletic department and Biddeford High School and the district.”

For his part, Descoteaux said he was hopeful the school finds the best possible person to continue to move the program forward and building on the changes that he made during his time in charge, which included overhauling the youth and junior high programs, changing the way freshmen transition into the high school team and beefing up the weight lifting program.

At the same time, Descoteaux said the new coach would also have to deal with the changing reality of coaching football in a school system that is losing enrollment, and as a result, participation in football.

But the job and the support from the community, he said, remain second to none.

“There’s a lot of great things about Biddeford. It’s a community that loves football and is very passionate, and that will never change. But there’s also some obstacles that have to be climbed over, and I think what we have to do is find the best person to continue to move the program forward and make this experience positive for our kids.

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