Not sure if Week 7 is officially the week high school football lovers wonder how the season flew by so fast, but it’s never a bad time to realize it is dwindling rapidly and we should appreciate it while it is still around.
• We have so many great matchups this weekend with a lot riding on them, and it isn’t even rivalry week, yet. We’ve highlighted the biggest local game already on this page, Portland vs. Oxford Hills, but there are plenty of other candidates that may be closer to you. The best locally are in Class D and Class E. Oak Hill at Spruce Mountain is a tempting matchup and indicative of how deep D North is. Madison at Winthrop/Monmouth/Hall-Dale could be a back-and-forth track meet. And don’t let the Class E on the marquee fool you, Maranacook at Dirigo could be a playoff preview, and as physical as any game in the state. Put on an extra layer and find the nearest gridiron. You likely won’t be disappointed.
• The Board of Governors of the Maine Shrine Lobster Bowl is moving forward with creating an award named after the late Mike Haley, who died in August. Rick Hersom, vice president of the Lobster Bowl, has sent out a letter to coaches requesting feedback on an annual honor for the state’s football coaches.
Haley, who coached football all over the state, including Edward Little, Lewiston, Oxford Hills and Oak Hill, served as the Lobster Bowl’s athletic director and emceed the halftime awards presentations at the game.
“Coach was the only non-Shriner on our Board of Governors,” Hersom said in the letter, “and we appreciated his expertise of the game and the gentle ways he was able to persuade coaches and players to his way of thinking.”
Details on the award’s criteria are still being finalized, but the honorees, who would be chosen by the Maine Football Coaches Association, would receive a plaque and have a donation made to the Shriners Hospitals for Children in Boston and Springfield in their name.
• Before conference crossovers became fashionable, and necessary, again, we didn’t get many chances to watch many of the southern Maine schools in action, which is what made last week’s Oxford Hills-Bonny Eagle game one to savor. It was a special treat to be able to talk, albeit briefly, with Scots coach Kevin Cooper after the game.
Many of us here in central Maine, including yours truly, tend of sneer when discussing big schools from the south, regardless of the sport, in part because we’re convinced they completely ignore anything north of Exit 53. But Cooper, and his counterpart at Thornton Academy, Livermore Falls’ own Kevin Kezal, are first class. Here’s hoping one of them is on the Fitzpatrick Stadium sidelines on Super Saturday.
• If you’ve read this column before, clearly you believe in second, third, fourth and fifth chances, because here you are again. And yet, I am willing to wager that even you wouldn’t give David Price the ball to start a playoff game again. Astros in six.
• It’s been refreshing to see so much good placekicking at the games I’ve watched this year. No, this is not a joke. The NFL is doing everything it can to take kicking out of the game, so, as usual, we have to turn to high schools to see the game as it was truly meant to be played. And we have a lot of very good, accurate kickers with strong legs around the region, as many as I can remember in one season in the 18 years I’ve been on the sidelines.
• If you have any friends or family who scoff at the importance of high school football (which is fashionable in some circles these days), I would humbly suggest you have them read this week’s feature on Oak Hill’s Caleb Treadwell, which you will find on Page C1.
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