BELFAST, Maine — Much of George Ross’ family tree is rooted in the rich maritime history of this working-class city at the mouth of the Passagassawakeag River on Penobscot Bay.
A great-great-great-uncle, C.P. Carter, founded the C.P. Carter Shipyard, a noted boatbuilder on the waterfront that in 1861 famously constructed the gunboat USS Penobscot in a record 90 days for use by the Union Navy during the Civil War.
Numerous other relatives also were raised in the Waldo County shire town, yet those ancestral links had little to do with Ross moving in 1981 from his native Massachusetts to Maine where this week he began his 35th season as head baseball coach at Belfast Area High School.
“It’s a little weird how it worked out,” said Ross, whose team plays midcoast rival Oceanside at Thomaston on Friday after beating Mount View of Thorndike in Wednesday’s opener. “I got out of college and was looking to teach or go into the state police or something like that. My brother had moved up here and I saw an ad in the paper and I applied and I got hired.
“They were really looking for a baseball coach more than a teacher at the time, but there was the teaching job with it, and when I got here I loved the community and loved Maine and stayed.”
Time-tested fundamentals
Ross has provided a relatively rare example of longevity in a modern high school sports world that seemingly becomes more pressurized each year.
His philosophy begins with the calming belief that the game itself isn’t all that different from when he was a three-time All-Middlesex League selection as a pitcher and third baseman at Reading Memorial High School who went on to earn second-team All-America honors and lead NCAA Division II in earned run average (0.81) as a freshman at Springfield College in 1975.
“I think kids have changed a little bit and maybe what attracts them and keeps them playing is a little different,” said Ross, who was a two-time All-New England choice and led Springfield to the 1977 ECAC Division II championship. “But the game’s the game.”
Crucial to the integrity of the game, he believes, are the same fundamentals he teaches today that he learned them from such personal mentors as former Reading coach Gil Congdon and Archie Allen, his coach at Springfield.
“I think consistently that it’s discipline and sportsmanship,” he said. “We talk a lot about how it’s not just the game but what you learn from it, the life lessons.
“One thing I’ve seen over the years is that kids are a little bit less disciplined now. There’s more yelling and lack of hustle and that sort of thing, so we emphasize playing the game right and understanding the tradition of it.”
One concession Ross has made to the evolving nature of his players is to remain in the dugout rather than stand in the third-base coaching box when the Lions are at the plate. Another element of that choice is his trust in a veteran coaching staff that includes Kevin Coombs, Paul Thibodeau and Chris LaValle, who now handles those third-base coaching duties.
“Unless you’re with the kids on the bench, if you watch high school games now you can see they’re not as focused,” he said. “So being able to be on the bench constantly has really been a great advantage for me.”
Ross also sees the challenge baseball faces in continuing to attract both coaches and players amid competition from other sports, the lure of computer life and social media, and family obligations.
“One of the big changes I’ve seen — and it’s not so much about the game or the kids — is people’s willingness to want to coach,” he said. “I think it’s a lot more difficult today to coach. The kids are a little different, the parents are much more involved in good and not-so-good ways, and with all the pressure on coaches now I think it’s very difficult to get people to coach. I think that’s why so many aren’t in the school today like they used to be.”
A helping hand
A big part of Ross’ coaching experience for his first two decades at Belfast was the presence of his father George Sr. around the program after his parents moved to the area a year after he arrived.
George Ross Sr. built the first set of dugouts at the baseball field located just behind the high school, along with foul poles, a flag pole and pretty much anything else he felt would benefit the program.
George Sr. died in 2005 and his body is buried in the cemetery just beyond the outfield fence. A marker in his honor subsequently was placed on a stone at the base of the flagpole at the field.
“He always liked to be involved, and he and my mother donated a few thousand dollars to the team over the course of 20 years,” said Ross, whose 90-year-old mother, Barbara, still lives in Belfast. “He was really involved with the team for a long time, and it was very special for me.
“I still miss him. It was very comforting. Our groundskeeper still cries when we talk about him because he was up there all the time with him.”
Preparing a legacy
Baseball in Belfast is healthy these days, including at the high school where the varsity and junior varsity teams have full 16-player rosters.
Ross’ varsity squad returns eight seniors, including 2015 Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class B Coastal player of the year Lucien-Gordley Smith and All-KVAC first-team pitcher Emery Dinsmore, from last spring’s 11-5 club that finished third in the Eastern Maine Class B Heal Point standings.
“I’ve been around long enough not to predict things too much because things happen and injuries happen,” he said, “but we feel we’re as strong as were last year and we’ve got some kids who have come up that I like, so we’ll see. We’re hoping to be strong again.”
Strength also can be found in the middle-school program, he said, setting the potential for sustained competitiveness at the high school level at the point Ross decides to hand the coaching reins over to a successor.
“I don’t think I have too many years left here, but you try to leave the program as strong as you can,” he said. “Right now it’s pretty strong. The eighth-grade and seventh-grade team is strong and they have a lot of kids, so we’re pretty happy with the the way it is right now.”
Ross, also a Belfast High School social studies teacher, isn’t planning a retirement tour quite yet. He cited the words of close friend Pete Moscariello, who retired in 2013 after more than three decades as the head baseball coach at Reading High.
“When Peter left he said, ‘I can’t imagine not being Reading’s coach,’” said Ross, whose Belfast teams made annual preseason trips to Massachusetts to play exhibition games against his alma mater for 30 years until Moscariello retired.
“I guess that struck me, that I can’t think of not being Belfast’s coach right now. But everything ends at some point and I’ve got some great assistants that I really feel would just take right over and do a good job, so that’s a big part of it.”
