Jon Francis remembers 2011 well.
Serving as the defensive coordinator under Coach Paul Lavigne for the Inter-Lakes/Moultonborough football team, Francis helped construct a defense and a team that shocked the now abolished Division VI. The program from the small towns of Meredith and Moultonborough ran the table, going 9-0 and claiming the championship with a decisive win over Epping/Newmarket.
That title coincided with the first season that Inter-Lakes High School and Moultonborough Academy joined forces as a co-op program. The Inter-Lakes’ School Board approved the proposal in 2010 – becoming the first Lakes Region team to adopt the cooperative approach – and just like that, rivals in nearly every other sport became unified on the gridiron. And that team will be playing for another title when it faces Stevens in the Division III championship on Saturday.
“It’s been great. It’s really nice, but it was definitely interesting at first,” said Francis, who has the Lakers on the verge of another title as the head coach five years later. “The kids weren’t really sure what to make of it, but I’ll tell you what, it didn’t take long … They are all here united under a common flag I guess you could say and everyone just wanted to play football and win some games.”
And win they did.
The first year could not have gone any better. Year 2 was a different story. The team shifted from Division VI to Division V, stumbling to a 1-7 record in Francis’s first year at the helm. The Lakers gained momentum in 2013, catapulting themselves back into the playoffs with a North Conference championship before losing to Bow in the Final Four. They made the playoffs again in 2014, but lost to Gilford in the first round before returning to the semifinals again last season.
Inter-Lakes on its own enjoyed success prior to 2011 with a championship in 2009, but the boost from the Moultonborough district, especially in the early stages, helped solidify the team as a contender every year.
“There was a lot of talent that came out of Moultonborough those first few years,” Francis said. “There is still some decent talent that comes out of there now, but it’s not as many. I want to say those (early) years we had around 11 Moultonborough kids. Now, we get around that five or six mark, so the amount of super quality athletes that you get out of it isn’t as much as it used to be but you still get a good amount.”
I-L/M senior quarterback Ryan Kelly has been with the program since 2013 and is a multi-sport athlete who knows the rivalry between the two schools well. It didn’t take long for him to put that all behind him.
“It was a little weird, but it gives us a really good sense of togetherness to have two schools bond together and work together and be successful,” Kelly said in full uniform as he headed out the door for Tuesday’s practice. “So it was weird at first, but then it just ended up working out for the best.”
Even with the joint team, Inter-Lakes/Moultonborough still constantly deals with the obstacle of facing schools with much higher enrollment numbers, which means larger and deeper football teams.
The Lakers, though, are driven by that and leave opponents wondering how such a small-town team can consistently have a big city impact.
“We definitely have a chip on our shoulder for that, but it really doesn’t come down to that,” Kelly said. “It comes down to the brotherhood that we have and the family we have with our team. We just have a lot of heart.”
“We don’t focus on the fact that we’re the smaller (team),” Francis said, “but we definitely joke amongst ourselves that most teams send more coaches to scout teams than we have on our coaching staff.”