New football coach to stress hard work, community involvement

Paul Withee Photo:

A VIKING RESURGENCE? — Paul Withee hopes to restore the Oxford Hills football program to its former glory. Withee comes off a successful 19 year tenure with Foxcroft Academy that included seven Eastern Maine titles and three state crowns.

OXFORD HILLS — The Oxford Hills Vikings have hired a new coach to help revive their struggling football program.

Paul Withee comes to the team after 19 years of success at Foxcroft Academy in Dover-Foxcroft, where his teams appeared in 13 Eastern Maine championship games and seven state title games, winning three.

His tenure includes an impressive run of five Eastern Maine crowns in the span of six seasons between 2002 and 2007.

He wants to bring that same level of on-field success to the green and gold for as long as he is coach by encouraging a strong work ethic, both during and between games.

"I'm a big believer in hard work and hard-working people," says Withee. "If the kids put the hard work in the weight room, they can reap the benefits by gaining confidence through getting stronger."

He does not, however, believe that the football team's involvement with the players and community should be restricted to the game day and the practice fields. As an educator himself, he knows that football cannot be the most important thing in his players' lives.

"I want them to be well-rounded citizens. Not too many students from Maine get Division One football scholarships, so I think it's very important that they become well-rounded students," he says. "I've been a teacher for 29 years, so that part of the equation is extremely important. They're at high school to get an education. They get to do extracurricular activities because it's something fun to do."

Community involvement is also an important aspect of any high school football program, says Withee.  Both on-field success and off-field activities should serve to make both the team and surrounding area stronger.

"One of the things we did [at Foxcfroft Academy] was work with a domestic abuse shelter in Dover-Foxcroft.  Every year they have a 5K road race as a fundraiser and every year, my team raised over $1,000," says Withee. "It would be a Saturday morning after a Friday night football game and we got 30-40 kids showing up, and that was something that was very important to me. That would be the kind of thing I would like the kids [at Oxford Hills] to be involved in."

Fielding a stronger team, he believes, will raise interest and have a continuing effect on aspiring football players in the area. In regular season and playoff games, Withee posted a record of 154 wins and 56 losses in 19 years at Foxcroft. He inherits a program that was once strong, but has won only two games over the past three years.

"Once you start losing, it's hard to get out of that mentality sometimes and kids don't want to be part of a program where they're losing all the time," says the coach. "At Foxcroft, we were in the playoffs within the second year I was there, and within six years we were state champs. You become successful and the whole community comes to the games and the younger kids see that and they want to be involved with the program."

"I worked at a lot of Shrine Games and the Oxford Hills kids were very personable and very good players," he said. "The area is very beautiful, [I was attracted by] the fact that it's a Class A school, the fact that they have lost some of their mojo, and the opportunity to try and get it back."