AUBURN — Not many people would have picked Craig Latuscha of Edward Little out of a lineup as the longest-tenured Maine Class A high school hockey coach.

Now, you can’t.

Latuscha has resigned from his head coaching position at Edward Little after 11 seasons at the helm and 14 overall with the program.

“It was just time,” Latuscha said. “Every other year we’ve been thinking about it. I always said I’d retire when I had kids. It’s getting to the point now, I have a couple of kids, I have a family, and family’s more important. I want to work on my educational goals, and do other things in life. Coaching two varsity sports is a lot.”

Latuscha is also the varsity girls’ soccer coach, and he said Wednesday he will remain in that position.

Latuscha started his coaching career as an assistant at Edward Little under Jamie Belleau, currently the head coach at Lewiston High School. In three years, the Eddies won two state titles, including a 23-1-0 season in 2003-04.

“I don’t think anyone could ever question his commitment, his dedication and his heart,” Belleau said Wednesday. “You knew he was going to give you everything he had every time you faced him.”

He took over the program the summer after the championship, and with a lot of graduation losses and a smaller program, had a rough couple of seasons.

Slowly, though, the program rebuilt itself. The Eddies clamored back to .500, and beyond. The number of players has risen from the mid-20s to nearly 40, and next season, the Eddies will have a full JV team and schedule.

In the standings, the Eddies’ rise has been measurable, too. After missing the playoffs early in Latuscha’s tenure, EL made the postseason seven times, including each of the past five seasons. In each of the past two, EL has advanced to the regional semifinal round.

“The team, the program has really improved,” Latuscha said. “To be where we were those first few years after the state titles, to make the semifinals the past two years in a row, that’s a significant accomplishment for this team, this family.”

But it is his own family, Latuscha said, that takes precedence.

“My contract got renewed, and I could have gone back,” Latuscha said. “But I knew, if I’m not going to be 110 percent into it because of my family and other commitments, I didn’t want to do it. I love hockey, I love the kids. I’m going to miss the players, the relationships I’ve had with them, giving back to the community. We did a lot of good things. But the planning, and the time, the fund raising, the equipment ordering, all that, if you want to do it right, you have to be full bore, and it takes a lot of time.”

“It’s often overlooked, but he did a lot of things off the ice as well as on the ice,” Belleau said. “He had his team reaching out into the community, with the learn-to-skate programs and so many other things. He made an effort to do things the right way, on the ice and off of it.”

Latuscha’s full staff has also decided to step away together.

His resignation now leaves his former head coach, Belleau, as the longest-tenured Class A coach in Maine. Belleau started at Lewiston High School in 2007-08

Latuscha lives locally with his wife, Julie, and two children, ages 3 and 1.

“Fourteen years, 11 of them as the head coach, that’s a long time now,” Latuscha said. “It’s a tough decision for me to make. My family is the most important thing. (The kids), they’re only little once. I want to enjoy them.”