The Lake Region High School football team will have a new look on offense this year.

Jason Simmons, who takes over the program after working as an assistant last season under Charles Loverin, is instituting the double wing formation.

Southern Maine football fans may be familiar with the run-happy configuration that generally utilizes two tight ends and a backfield with a pair of wingbacks, a quarterback and a fullback. Gorham coach Dave Kilborn has been running it successfully for years. In fact, that’s where Simmons, a Naples resident and longtime local youth football coach, picked it up, though it certainly wasn’t love at first sight.

“We used to go watch a lot of Gorham games,” Simmons said. “We’d just go watch good high school football. And I hated it at first. I didn’t like it. But then I got curious about it and I started investigating it, and I found that it’s a very sound offense. It’s built for a team like us that doesn’t have the overwhelming talent, but has good, solid, tough kids who can move.”

The Lakers are coming off a winless season in 2008 in their first year under Loverin, who stepped down due to family health concerns. Lake Region is 4-32 over the past four years.

“These kids have been getting beat so bad for so long. I’m trying to teach them how to fight,” Simmons said. “When you get punched in the mouth, you’ve got to fight back, not lay down.”

The double wing can level the playing field for the Lakers, who don’t have a lot of size.

“I’ve got a team full of 6-foot, 200-pound kids,” Simmons said.

Instead of trying to plow straight ahead against a larger defense, those undersized but agile linemen will be used to form a mobile offensive line that will do a lot of angle blocking.

Simmons plans to rotate players in the backfield to keep legs fresh. While the double wing can be effective at gaining small chunks of yardage at a time – which can wear down and frustrate defenses while eating up the clock – it also has big-play potential to keep defenses honest.

“You make the defense play the whole field because they’ve got to worry about the traps and the counters and the reverses,” Simmons said.

The offense looked good in the opening scrimmage against Maranacook, finding the end zone four times. The defensive was stout, as well, not allowing any points.

The Lakers are bolstered by the addition of senior fullback Jake Albert, a transfer from Fryeburg Academy who Simmons said was named MVP at a Boston College football camp during the offseason

“My expectations are high for the team,” Simmons said. “I don’t think we are going to turn everything around the first year, but I definitely feel we should be above .500.”

Lake Region will have its hands full in its Sept. 4 opener, when it hosts defending Class B state champ Mountain Valley. Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Kilborn Field.