In Lynn, young Bulldogs are making history

First team in program to vie for national title

Members of the East Lynn Bulldogs Pop Warner C team with coach Bob Maitland after a practice last week. (Lisa Poole for the Boston Globe)

The goals are the same every year.

Lynn city championship. North Shore championship. Eastern Mass. championship. Then see what happens next.

But as Bob Maitland watched his East Lynn Bulldogs Pop Warner C team crush the competition, winning six, then seven, and then eight straight games, barely giving up a touchdown, he was starting to see things a little earlier than he expected.

So one day, during practice, he tried to explain to his team how much potential it had.

But they couldn't really hear him.

A jet was passing over the practice field, and the coach's voice could barely be heard over the roaring engine. Maitland spent all that time reaching for a way to get his players to understand what he was saying, then, he looked at the plane and realized what his whole speech was about.

He told the players, "We want to get on that jet."

The goals had become bigger. Five other teams had come close, but this team, Maitland thought, was good enough to go to the Pop Warner national championships in Orlando, Fla. From that point on, he continued to make his point every time he saw a plane.

"There it goes," he'd say. "That's our jet, guys."

The Bulldogs went 13-0 during the regular season, allowing only two touchdowns along the way. And when it came time to beat a Worcester team that had become such a nuisance over the past seven years that Maitland started to call it the Worcester monkey, the Bulldogs made sure to get it off his back with a 20-12 win in the New England title game.

This morning in Orlando, the Bulldogs will take on the Southfield-Lathrup Falcons (Michigan).

"I'm totally satisfied with what we've achieved so far," he said. "But I'm a football coach. I'm going down to win. I think we have one of the best teams in the country and I think that we can compete with anybody on any level. We plan on winning the game."

The New England Championship trophy is the first in the program's 65 years, history indeed.

These Bulldogs understand the history, even if it started long before they were born.

"It's big for us to make it to Florida," said Isaiah Davis, a lightning-fast, freight-train-strong 11-year-old running back who had scored 20 touchdowns on 26 carries.

"It always feels good to be the first people to do something," said Schuyler Hogan, a confident 12-year-old who is as good at his post as a two-way end as he is at Madden NFL Football.

"Nobody can do it again," said Danny Kane, the 13-year-old safety.

"It feels good that we're the first to do it," said Zach Lozzi, the Bulldogs two-way lineman, who is unanimously considered the hardest hitter on the team.

The Bulldogs needed to raise $45,000 to make the trip down to Disney. One of the largest donations was a $5,000 gift from Patrick McGrath. His son Eric was a product of East Lynn Pop Warner, then a record setter at Lynn Classical, and just completed his senior season at Trinity, leading the Bantams to an 8-0 season.

"Pat saw what this league did for his son and wanted to support us," said Jeff Earp, who assisted with fund-raising.

Danny Kane's father, John, is an assistant coach with the team, but he still remembers almost every detail about his playing days with East Lynn. He can still name all his coaches.

He knows them all. He sees them all the time.

"They remember me and we talk," he said. "It's a family."

The past week the city has rallied around the Bulldogs, embracing them as their newest rock stars.

"Everybody's starting to get on board," Maitland said. "It's spreading like a wave to everyone. Everyone's starting to pick it up and trying to show their support whether it's just, 'Great job guys, best of luck,' or throwing a couple bucks in the kitty. So in that regard Lynn's a tight-knit community."

Maitland himself is a lifelong Lynner. He's been coaching the team about as long as most of his players have been alive.

As for the why he decided to get involved 10 years ago, he has many reasons.

When he was their age, his mother and father split up. It left him caught in the middle. Maitland still remembers sitting on the stairs on his 12th birthday, waiting for his father to pick him up to go to a Patriots game. His mother told him, "He isn't coming."

Those are the memories he walks around with today. The kids who come out for his Pop team don't all come from picture-perfect backgrounds. Many come from single-parent homes and have have to scramble just to come up with the registration fees. Maitland understands.

"If we can give these guys a good support system down on the football field and they keep carrying that over for the next phase of their lives, then it's been a huge success for everybody regardless of how we do competition-wise. You know if these kids don't play sports, they're going to make other decisions and it's not going to be what you want.

If I can make a difference in any of these kids lives, it's easy for me."

The practices aren't light. Neither is the workload. But they came out. Five days a week before school started. Three days during school. There were never fewer than 31 kids at practice.

"They were just hungry to get to the next level," Maitland said.

Assistant coach Tom Schumann's voice has the effect of a fire alarm on players, who know that practice isn't over until you hear him yell, "Toe the line!" and everyone does their suicide sprints.

Every practice Schumann will go up to the players and say, "You can either be champs or chumps."

"They really just believed in each other," Maitland said. "They were the hardest-working kids I've ever had. They never sat back on their laurels and said, hey, we're good. They always came down the next Tuesday after a game on Sunday and starting focusing ahead instead of looking back."

The Bulldogs left for Florida on Friday, but before they did, they used one practice day to take it all in.

"We asked them, 'Who's been to Florida before?' " Kane said. "About half of them raised their hands."

Eventually, another jet blew by. Maitland didn't have to explain it anymore. The excitement was already pulsing through everyone.

He told them, "There's our plane."

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com