Former longtime coaches Keith Jones, front, and Rick Urda spread Milford head coach Max Morellis's message in returning this fall to help out on staff. (Cabinet photo by TOM KING)

MILFORD – To put it bluntly, Rick Urda was, well, a little bored.

What would he do without football in the fall? Apple pick? Foliage trips? Yard work?

Nah. More football.

Urda, the former longtime Milford High School assistant who also had a stint as Merrimack’s head coach, decided the best way to spend the fall was to return to the sidelines as an assistant under Spartans head coach Max Morelli.

He’s joined by Spartans coaching legend, former longtime head coach Keith Jones, who is helping out as well when he can as he has a freshman son in the program.

But Urda? He took a couple years off as he saw his final football playing son, Gavin, finish up at UNH. It was a blast.

“We traveled all over the country – Florida, North Carolina,” Urda said. “Last year, I didn’t really have a fall (before) off, so I said, ‘Let me give it a try.’

“It was OK, went to a couple of UNH games, couple high school games here, couple of other high school games. But I just missed it. It got a little bit boring, you know?”

Urda said he missed the game planning, working with the kids, etc.

“It’s a good group of guys to work with, the kids are very respectful, they want to learn, they want to get better,” Urda said. “You know? Why not come back and do what I can? Class organization here, can’t complain, it’s fun.”

For Urda, after a couple of years away, there was a learning curve. He coached under Jones, and Morelli has his own system.

“Everything’s a little bit different,” he said. “Conceptually, scheme wise, I’ve run this stuff in the past, it’s just learning the terminology.”

What about the technology. Well, it wasn’t that long ago. “We had ‘Huddle’ before, and Max puts everything up there,from terminology to schemes, blocking, offense, defense, special teams. In that aspect, it’s a little different. If I have a question, I can ask him; if I have a question at home I can go right on the ‘Huddle’ and look stuff up. So it’s good.”

Morelli has thrilled to have both helping out. They both work at Merrimack High School during the day, so he suspected there was a scheme hatched there.

“They see each other in school, so when one of them was kind of thinking about it, I’m sure they chatted,” Morelli said with a grin.

And he is thrilled that they did.

“It’s tremendously helpful on a lot of fronts,” Morelli said. “Not just the football part, where you have a lot of experience, but both Coach Urda and Coach Jones have been head coaches for a long time at various places they’ve been to, so there’s a wealth of football knowledge there.

“It’s tremendously helpful for me, obviously Coach Jones being the head coach here,he’s got a lot of knowledge on things you really don’t expect to come about, just some of those weird odds and ends when you’re the head coach that you’re dealing with; it’s nice to have the resource of somebody who’s kind of experienced some of those things and is familiar with stuff. And obviously really tied in to the community here.”

Rick Urda said he’s glad to return to help out at Milford because he missed working with the players. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

But there’s another benefit. Morelli gets to see them both regularly.

“On a personal level, they’re very close friends of our entire staff,” he said. “So it’s nice to have them around all the time.They’re a lot of time to be around.”

It helps Morelli to focus more on some of the things he wasn’t able to before in terms of simply football.

It was late spring when it all transpired.

“Both Coach Jones and Urda are welcomed back with open arms, a spot was always available for them,” Morelli said. “They said they were interested and I said ‘Come down, happy to have you.'”

For Urda and everyone else, this fall won’t be as boring, right?