WATERBORO — It started with a 1-7 season and ended with a 2-6 campaign, but in 16 years, John Morin took the Massabesic football program to new heights. But just as it did 16 years ago, the program needs a change, which is why Morin stepped down as head coach of the Mustangs last week.

“There’s some things that need to change,” Morin said. “I think that at the point where the football program is in the district is right now, that I think the best thing for that, the change to occur, is for it to start at the top.”

Morin said stepping down is “a hard thing to swallow.”

Though it was a difficult decision for Morin to make, he said he knows it’s the right one.

“Inside, I really feel that at this time, I’m at peace with this decision,” he said.

Though the program has fallen on hard times the last few years, Morin took a team coming off consecutive 1-7 seasons and turned it into a state champion in four years. All this from someone who had never been a head football coach before coming to Massabesic.

“Being a head coach was a goal of mine since ”¦ I knew what I wanted to do when I was a sophomore in high school,” said Morin. “Massabesic High School and R.S.U. 57 gave me the opportunity to do that. So I will be forever grateful for them giving me the opportunity to live my dream.”

Morin thought that dream would take place in Saco, at Thornton Academy where he was an assistant coach for 12 seasons.

“I thought that being the head coach at Thornton Academy was what I was destined to do. That did not work out. It hurt,” said Morin, who said he did some soul-searching after not replacing Dick Agreste when he retired. “I had to be at peace that that was God’s decision that I wasn’t there. I had to really lean on my faith at that time. That’s how much that meant to me.”

Then, as Morin said “God closes a door, he opens another one.”

Little did Morin know that the open door he was looking for was in Waterboro.

“When I applied for this job in 1997, there were numerous coaches and officials, people that knew SMAA football, told me ”˜John, you don’t want to go to Massabesic. The six towns don’t work together. The six towns don’t like eachother. You’ll never get those six towns to work together to be successful the way that you want to,’” he said. “Rather than use that as an excuse not to, we used that as a reason to.”

Morin got to Massabesic with a vision, albeit one that the community hadn’t seen since the program started. But it was a community hungry to see success, and that’s for what Morin and his staff were aiming.

“I know what the expectations were here when I got here, and I know how we ramped those expectations up. I know that some of the things that we talked about weren’t talked about in this district before we got here, and (we) established those as goals,” Morin said. “But I’ve got to say that the young men in this district rose to the occasion. And for most of those 16 years, Massabesic was one of the most competitive programs in the SMAA.”

Morin’s tenure hit its peak in 2000, when the Mustangs won their first and only Class A state championship, going 12-0 in the process. The following year, the Mustangs began the season 2-4 before making a run to the Western Maine final.

But that stretch of glory seems like ages ago, and this past year the Mustangs couldn’t rebound from a 2-4 start. And in 2010, the Mustangs went 0-8, a far cry from a decade before.

“Am I happy about the way things have gone over the last four years? Certainly not,” Morin said. “If it’s broke, you got to find a way to fix it. And I have not been able to do that.”

Morin said that door that opened for him 16 years ago “has closed.”

“It’s time for a new direction and a new open door for them,” Morin said of the football program and the community as a whole.

Morin said he wants no part of helping pick his successor, but that he “will give them whatever they want, or whatever they feel they need from me.”

Morin said he doesn’t know what is next for him, but that if it doesn’t include football, it will be a strange feeling for him.

“Part of me is scared because when I was 10 years old, I walked onto a football field. That was 45 years ago,” said Morin. “Now I am looking at this August, not walking onto a football field for the first time (since then).”

— Contact Wil Kramlich at 282-1535, Ext. 323 or follow him on Twitter @WilTalkSports.