What a crazy weekend

Some highlights from a very strange Friday and Saturday in high school football:

When I showed up at the Lisbon-Winthrop football game Friday night, I was thrilled to see programs with rosters. I think every school should do this for both teams, especially in football where there are so many players.

Then I noticed that the Lisbon roster just listed the players’ grade. No height, weight, position, not even numbers. I ended up getting the numbers — believe it or not — from the Lisbon cheerleaders. I shared these with the public address announcer, or he wouldn’t have had them either.

It’s the second time I’ve been helped out in that regard this year. At a Camden Hills-Nokomis game in Newport, there was a roster for Nokomis only. A very nice Camden Hills fan lent me her roster so I could copy down names at halftime, and then another nice fan gave me his roster to keep.

The press box at Winthrop is on a hill. A few minutes into the game, a man came up to the booth carrying a small dog. While the man stood in front of me and blocked my view, he complained that the game started early. He insisted he was right about this, because he has satellite time in his car.

The game may have started slightly early, because both teams opted to be introduced as a team rather than individually. I’ve seen a lot of this in games this year. I hope people understand that the teams that don’t do this can have unity, too. The Skowhegan field hockey players are introduced individually, and they’re trying for their ninth consecutive state title. Plus, they play together as well as any central Maine team I've seen in any sport.

The Eastern regional field hockey games were supposed to be played at Hampden on Saturday. Since they were postponed, I was planning to go to the Hampden at Nokomis football game. I was told the Nokomis field can handle plenty of water, but when I got there, the game had been moved.

Where was it moved to? You guessed it: The same field they would have used for field hockey, but didn’t because of the rain.