LEBANON — As the Lebanon High football team’s practice wound to a close Monday evening, a gaggle of elementary school-aged children, outfitted in the same maroon-clad gear, trotted around the school’s practice field for a warmup.

Some tried to simultaneously run and stare at coach Doug Johnson’s squad, which is returning to varsity play this season in NHIAA Division III after one year at the jayvee level. Others continued to talk and joke with their teammates, paying no mind to the players nearly twice their senior. A few even attempted to hurdle the tackling dummies scattered out on the sideline.

The concurrent practices, which happen on adjacent fields sandwiched between the elementary school and Lebanon’s football stadium, are Johnson’s creation. He wants to re-establish the link between the Lebanon’s youth teams and the high school program.

It’s how Johnson, his staff and players are rebuilding the culture of Raiders football. “I believe in all the lessons of football,” Johnson said. “Excel in the classroom, be on time … respect your opponents (and) bring the young ones with you.”

The pre-season program sent out by the school showed 36 players on the roster, including 20 freshmen and sophomores.

Ben Direnzo and Chris Kinne, two of Johnson’s upperclass leaders, were overcome by a sense of relief when they learned that Lebanon was returning to varsity football in 2024.

Kinne has played under three different head coaches during his time on the team. Capping his high school career with a varsity season was all the senior guard and defensive tackle wanted.

For Direnzo, a junior jack-of-all-trades linebacker, tight end and punter, the announcement prompted the return of an excitement and seriousness that maybe didn’t exist for the team last season. Kinne echoed a similar sentiment.

“There’s been a lot more intensity this year compared to last year,” Kinne said. “I know I’ve had a lot more drive to get up and go to practice.”

That intensity has been fostered in the weight room, which is where Johnson saw the early inklings of a cultural transformation begin to take shape.

Johnson, a Lebanon High star quarterback in the 1970s who went on to play at NCAA Division III Tufts University before coaching collegiately, said “strength is the No. 1 thing” for a football team.

In an effort to build that foundation for his players, he opened up the weight room for four hours a day during the summer and signs all of his emails with “strength and commitment,” Direnzo said.

It worked.

Johnson only had two players on the roster last year who could bench at least 200 pounds. That number has risen to 10 this season, the 66-year-old head coach said. There is collective buy-in across the squad to be in the weight room, evidenced by a dozen players showing up for a 10 a.m. lift the day after a preseason jamboree.

Johnson was delighted to meet them that Sunday morning. “The intangible of strength is that when you do it together, now you’re going to commit to one another,” he said. “You’re not going to miss practice, you’re not going to let one another down, and you’re going to create a bond. That’s how you win football games.”

Lebanon’s goal to return to the time when it was a perennial playoff contender under coach Chris Childs, who resigned after the 2021 season. The Raiders are just three years removed from an appearance in the Division II state semifinals.

Johnson is still picking up the pieces of a “broken” program, one that was left reeling after a 0-9 campaign in 2022.  Last year, it downshifted to a junior varsity scheduled.

Johnson started with the basics. Players didn’t know how to practice,  watch film or act while riding the bus to an away game, he said. 

Slowly but surely, they’re making progress — both on the field and off of it.

That progress will be tested Friday night at Monadnock in Lebanon’s season opener. Johnson expects his team to take some lumps in its first varsity game — and season — in two years, but he’s excited about “the baby steps” he’s witnessing, from the weight room to practice attentiveness.

His players, meanwhile, are just eager for the chances to play under the lights. “It should be fun compared to Wednesday 4 p.m. JV games,” said sophomore Jordan Findley, a running back and safety.

Lebanon’s first-year athletic director, Ben Davis, who took the job in July after serving as assistant athletic director at Hanover High, commended Johnson and his coaching staff’s re-ignition of thefootball program.

He added that the opportunity to play on Friday nights is a “deserved payoff” for the work the players have put in all off-season.

“We’re just excited to see what’s going to happen with the program,” Davis said. “Win or lose, whatever happens this year, just the fact that we’re on the field playing varsity games and doing it with that team culture aspect — the focus of doing things the right way — is really exciting.”

It’s all about changing the culture for Johnson — making Lebanon football “cool again.”

So that’s why when he heads out after practice, he makes sure to stop by the rec league practice and tell the young players to give themselves three claps for their hard work.

“All the little boys during agility and stretch get to see what the big kids look like,” Johnson said. “And when I was a little boy and I saw the varsity guys, I thought, ‘They are so awesome. I want to be that.’ ”

Alex Cervantes can be reached at acervantes@vnews.com or 603-727-7302.