18 seasons of teaching players

It’s a Friday night and the lights are on over the Souhegan High School football field.

There are no more home games for the Sabers, but there are still about a dozen players in full uniform, running around the field. They’re taking turns throwing passes and kicking field goals, and doing something that their football coach has always wanted them to do – be kids and have fun.

The real reason the Souhegan players are out there is for a photo shoot, something they’ve done at the end of the last two seasons. A photographer has set up a few flashes, and a machine pumps out fog that envelopes each player as they pose for photos.

And they’re about be joined by a special guest.

The photo shoot followed the team’s first practice in almost a week, as the Sabers rested for a few days before preparing for the Thanksgiving game against Merrimack. A week before, Souhegan was knocked out of the playoffs in a heartbreaker to Goffstown, and after the game, head coach Mike Beliveau told the team he’d be stepping down at the end of the season.

The field grows quiet as the players realize their special guest is about to arrive. At the sound of clicking cleats, they turn and watch as a familiar figure, donned in a white Souhegan jersey and pads, makes his way on to the field.

Beliveau has suited up to join his players, and they greet him with a round of cheers and laughter.

Not many coaches would like having his players laughing on the football field. Not many coaches are Mike Beliveau.

“Mike is a guy who likes to have fun and he wears his emotions on his sleeve,” assistant coach Paul Landau said. “My first year here, I was coming out of UNH, and football was always a serious thing. Here we stopped practice one time for a sunset. That’s his personality.”

And that’s why so many players have enjoyed playing for Beliveau. Sure, there have been some who haven’t appreciated the coach’s unique ways, but there have been many more, players and coaches, who have.

Include the 2012 New Hampshire Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl team among them.

“It was a magical week,” said Merrimack coach Joe Battista, who was an assistant at Souhegan from 2002-07. “It was one of the best moments of my life. To see kids from different backgrounds, the way he was able to bring them all together and get them to play as a family, I think that team, per player, would come back and play for him in a heartbeat.”

Beliveau’s coaching career at Souhegan began the same year the school opened, in 1992. He spent that season as an assistant under Jim Mullaney, and after a year off, Beliveau returned to the sideline in 1994 as an assistant under Scott Laliberte. When Laliberte returned to Bishop Brady, his alma mater, for the 1995 season, Souhegan athletic director Bill Dod decided to stay inhouse and tapped Beliveau as the next coach.

“I think he believed in me more than I believed in me at the time,” Beliveau said. “It probably showed in the first year. I wasn’t as confident as I should have been.”

The Sabers went 2-6 in that first season, the only losing season in Beliveau’s 18 years. In 1998, they finally made it into the postseason, the first of 10 Division III championship appearances for Beliveau. But it would take until 2004 – and four title game losses – for Souhegan and its coach to get its first title.

That season, the Sabers were loaded, both on the field and on the sideline. Two players from that team – Sean Jellison (UNH) and Rich Lapham (Boston College) – went on to play Division I college football. And three of the assistant coaches – Battista, Kurt Hines (Bedford) and Justin Hufft (Goffstown) – moved on to become head coaches. Another assistant, Scott Prescott, was with Beliveau for 14 years, including this year.

At one point, four of Beliveau’s former assistants were running their own programs in New Hampshire. Milt Robinson, who had coached at Hollis Brookline for 10 years, also stepped down at the end of the 2012 season.

“I think his record speaks for itself, and not just record in wins and losses,” said Hines, who was an assistant from 1999-2006. “Look at the coaches he has mentored. He gave me my first coaching job, and I’m forever grateful for that.”

But before that group, the one coach who helped Beliveau right the ship was Vinny Perroni, who also coached at Manchester Central and at Milford.

“Vinny really did a heck of a job with my defense and got us over the hump of not being able to beat the Kennetts and Laconias,” Beliveau said. “It’s like Vinny jump-started us, the next group got the ball rolling, and the last group kept the ball rolling.”

That next group – Prescott, Hines, Hufft and Battista – helped the Sabers win a championship in 2004, but when Souhegan won three straight from 2008-10, it was the later group of Landau, J.T. Anderson and Mark Ginnard on the sidelines.

Ginnard is now an assistant with Hufft at Goffstown, but it should surprise no one if any of that group become head coaches.

“That staff, there was magic there, and we were all football junkies,” Battista said. “Coach B would give us assignments and ask us to do things and then let us run with it. I think that’s what molded us into head coaches, and allowed us to take on our own programs.”

Not long after becoming a head coach himself, Beliveau realized there were two things he needed to do if he was going to have success. One was to be himself; the other was to admit that his assistants might know things he didn’t.

“A long time ago, I decided that I have to be me when I coach,” Beliveau said. “I can’t fake it and be like other coaches who have different styles. Maybe they’re military style, or attention to every detail. Yeah, everyone wants those, but I made a decision to just be who I am, and either that’s going to work, or it’s not going to work. If it didn’t work, I was ready to accept that and let another style come in and lead the program.

“For me to sit there and say ‘I’ll take the defensive line and teach them great technique and they’ll play out of their minds,’ that would be not true. But Joe Battista could. That was his strength. He was a college lineman. I said ‘Joe, here is your space, here are your kids, here is the time I’m giving you.’ I might give some direction. Same with Justin, and even Kurt, coaching the freshmen, put your thumbprint on it. Give the kids a great foundation coming forward.”

It was Hufft who suggested the biggest change for the Sabers. After years of running the wing-T, Hufft, who graduated from Souhegan in 1995, told Beliveau he thought Souhegan should switch to a spread offense. It took a little coaxing, but Beliveau agreed and in 2006, the Sabers started running the spread.

“I can attribute most of that to Justin Hufft,” Beliveau said. “That young creative mind saying this is the way the game is evolving, Mike, will you give it a look and me being flexible and saying yeah. I had to be convinced that the spread running game would be as effective as running the ball out of the wing-T. I learned you can run it as equally as well.”

Hufft took the spread with him to Goffstown, but, just like the others, he also brought a little bit of Beliveau with him.

“The overriding majority of stuff was stuff I got from being around Mike for that long, especially dealing with kids, making it a fun experience for them,” said Hufft, who was an assistant from 1998-2008. “Football is a tough game and not everyone can do it. If at the end of the day, it doesn’t have a reward, other than wins and losses, it’s not worth it.”

In all, Beliveau estimates that the number of players he’s had go on to play in college is over 50, including two of this year’s seniors, Jake Kennedy, who committed to UNH in September, and Tyler Ford, who is being recruited by several schools. Going through the process with Beliveau was something that made Kennedy’s high school experience more enjoyable.

“I love the guy,” he said. “He is one of the greatest guys I know, on and off the field. He gets it. He did so much for me recruiting-wise, I’ll never be able to repay him for that. He always stuck his neck out for me. And not just for me, for every guy who wants to (play at the next level).”

With seven years between Division I recruits, Believau was able to understand and savor the experience of helping Kennedy find the right fit.

“Jake had verbal scholarship offers coming in in February of his junior year,” he said. “By the start of the summer, he had like eight. It’s been a while since we’ve had someone with that much scholarship interest.”

Beliveau also played a major role in Lapham’s recruitment, helping the offensive lineman land at Boston College. But it was something else that happened during his senior year at Souhegan that stands out.

“He had a way of motivating you, a way of keeping your head on straight that you don’t really see from the oustide,” Lapham said. “We were playing Kingswood in one of the first games of senior year, right after my collar bone injury.

“There was a big hit and I saw a kid laying on the ground. I had a tough time reliving what I went through, seeing it happen to another kid. People don’t pick up on that, but I had a conversation with Coach B about getting my head back in the game. He gave me the time of day and heard me out.”

It all goes back to treating the players like a part of the family, according to Battista.

“Treat them like you’d want your own son to be treated if he was playing for another coach,” he said. “It goes back to the way he molds young men. He gets them to play to their full potential and he takes advantage of what they do best. He doesn’t put them in situations where they aren’t going to excel.”

While he was close to the teams that won titles in 2008-09, Beliveau feels like this year’s group of seniors has been one of the tightest he’s ever coached.

“This group, they all hang around with each other and they like each others’ company,” he said. “They do things that kids should do. We made football fun and we proved that we could win at the same time.