New London — Ray LaForte shared an office with Bill George at Ithaca College, where both were assistant football coaches. George was hired as the head coach at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy prior to the 1999 season.

LaForte, whose wife Michelle was pregnant with the couple's older son, Michael, came with him.

"I had done Ithaca," said LaForte, Coast Guard's offensive coordinator. "A service academy, to me, had a really big intrigue.

"With a national championship team, there might be an enormous pressure to keep it at a national championship level. With Coast Guard Academy football, there's an enormous pressure to keep humming along and competing and going after it every weekend. It's a parallel challenge (to Ithaca). Never once have we finished watching film on a Sunday (of the opponent) and said, 'This is in the bag.'

"It's a constant challenge. It keeps you pretty sharp (coaching-wise). Our X's and O's have really flowed over 21 years."

George, after 21 seasons as the Coast Guard head coach, announced earlier this week that he will retire following Saturday's season-finale against the Merchant Marine Academy, a game played annually between the two U.S. service academies — both who play at the Division III level — for the Secretaries' Cup.

George has 75 wins, the most in program history, including back-to-back eight-win seasons in 2006 and 2007. He also has 125 losses.

The academy's mission: produce officers. The football team's mission: win games. Even though that balancing act is not always an easy one, George leaves with the admiration of his players, past and present.

"I think he's done a great job at one of the toughest jobs you can have in sports," senior quarterback Ryan Jones said at Wednesday's weekly football team luncheon. "He's our go-to guy. It's pretty evident he knows what it's like to go here."

"He does care about everybody on the team whether it's the best player on the team or a freshman who doesn't play very much," senior cornerback Mike Goldsworthy said. "I got in trouble (in the past) and he had my back. He does everything in his power; he always tends to put us first."

In addition to being the head coach, George oversees the offensive line. He is a former All-America center at Ithaca. LaForte, who calls George "a wound-up guy," said that sometimes George will come into a team huddle following a stint with the offensive line "all frothy."

"It's tough. It's tough at a place like this," George said. "You go through some tough years. Maybe it's why you don't smell the roses enough. But I know that if you treat (the players) right around here, on Tuesday, they're still practicing (like it's) the Super Bowl."

George said he gravitated to football when he was younger because he couldn't hit a curveball and he skated on his ankles.

Now, he's down to one last game.

"I had a great four years playing for coach George," said former quarterback Derek Victory, who threw for a record-setting 7,513 yards from 2013-16 and is now a lieutenant junior grade attending flight school in Pensacola, Fla. "On the field and off the field he is a great leader and always demanding the best of his players."

"He was one of these few people that you knew cared about you as a person outside of the hustle of the academy," said former quarterback Jon Resch (2009-12), now a C-130 pilot at U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater in Florida. "I don't think I truly appreciated it until I came back to school and saw coach again. He was so excited. The guy just flat out cares about the kids he coaches."

v.fulkerson@theday.com