Small can be mighty was the predominant theme at Tuesday’s preseason practices. We also learned that offense makes a team mightier, but when it’s all on the line, choose the defense.

Varsity Maine visited practices for the Dirigo and Kennebunk field hockey and Skowhegan football teams, and here’s what we learned in Dixfield:

Love cometh before the yell

First-year coach Alyssa Newhall has already become famous among Dirigo players for her creative nicknames (Madisyn Bradeen is “Carthage,” because that’s where she’s lives), voice impressions and her laugh.

“She does a dolphin laugh when she’s being sarcastic, like when we say something, she’ll say it back to us with an attitude, and then she will do a dolphin laugh,” junior Grace Jackson said.

Newhall said her main priority as a coach is to shape the players as humans, then athletes.

“I just truly believe in building the player, building the human before the X’s and O’s come,” Newhall said. “I’m going to love them as hard as I’m going to push them, and I just believe I can’t yell at them until I love them, so (I’m) building that trust with them.”

Strength in small numbers

The Cougars’ roster only has 15 players. That’s a big change from last year, when there were more players than uniforms.

Jackson said the advantages of a smaller team are that everyone is closer and more comfortable around each other.

“We’re small but mighty,” Newhall said.

Field hockey vs. football

Newhall isn’t the only member of her family who is new to Dirigo’s coaching staff. Her husband, Joshua Newhall, was hired in the spring as the school’s head football coach. On Wednesday, the field hockey and football teams will battle in a co-ed field hockey, and then a flag football game.

“It’s either going to end in a win or a divorce,” Alyssa Newhall said. “It’s exciting, though. We’re super supportive of each other, and he actually knows field hockey, so I can talk football with him and he can talk field hockey with me. I have his playbook, so it’s on tomorrow.”