East 28 West 23
(Lewiston ME) Football in July!
Sounds hot and it was.
But the peripheries minimized the heat and the lengthy program.
Football was played but the major takeaway (for me) was the financial generosity shown to those in less fortunate circumstances.
Getting involved was not an option for the players and the cheerleaders. They were expected to fund raise and wow did they!
The total raised this year was reported to be $235,399.
The top fundraisers were Matt Charpentier (York) & Jordan Craft (Old Town) and they were honored at halftime.
The money raised goes to the twenty-two Shrine Children’s hospitals.
I decided to get to Lewiston High School 45 minutes to an hour early. I wanted a good place to park so that I could leave with some ease.
When I arrived, I quickly figured out that I might well have been the LAST person to arrive. The parking lot was full and fortunately, for me, I slid into a pretty good location.
I walked up the hill into the stadium area and saw the stands packed and the players already on the field. So much for getting set up before things started!
I surmised that the players/cheerleaders came by car not bus. Therefore, getting there early was a necessity for parents.
The sun was shining, and the field was turf.
The East wore red, and the West wore blue.
The teams had several weeks of practice at Foxcroft Academy.
Trying to put a team together on such limited notice had to be extremely challenging. Granted, seventeen of the nineteen seniors on the Maine All-State team were involved.
The game had a ton of penalties with most of them being in the “not-enough-time-together” category.
A scoffer might say, “You put a flag in an official’s pocket and sooner or later they’ll want to throw it!” Plenty were thrown. Also, plenty of timeouts were used when coaches could see that the expected play had players out of place. But this was bound to happen under the circumstances.
Stability could be a difference maker and fortunately for the East they had it in quarterback Eli Soehren (East MVP) and his dad, head coach Mark Soehren.
The state-champ, Oxford Hills duo guided the East to a 28-23 win ending a three-game losing streak.
Eli, who will attend Colby, took every snap and had a connection to every point. How? He threw three touchdown passes, rushed for a touchdown, and kicked four extra points.
The West had a pretty good passing game too. Jaelen Jackson (12-17 = 147 yards) and DJ Alston (9-18 = 126 yards) found receivers, especially West MVP Nick Laughlin (9 catches for 157 yards).
The West rallied back to within five points late in the final quarter but couldn’t get another possession to shoot for the win.
The East’s Eli Bigelow had two touchdown catches in the first half.
I was close to one of Eli’s TD catches. In that one, he caught the pass near the back of the end zone and sat down against the fence beyond the end zone. (That chain link fence was alarmingly close to the back of the end zone IMO.)
There were also senior cheerleaders for both sides. They, too, had practiced for today’s event. At half-time the two squads combined for a performance. What I thought was a brilliant idea was that they did their routine twice………once for each side of the field. This arrangement gave everyone a look at what the squads were doing.
Information you may not need: I sat on the East bench during half-time as the cheerleaders were performing. My intention was to look through my pictures and try to delete the ones needing deletion. Suddenly, one of the West’s cheerleaders came running my way. I guessed she was after a prop for the performance. Wrong. She headed for a big trash barrel nearby and embraced it, losing a meal. She then took about five steps back toward the field and was back engaged with that barrel again! After that she ran back to the action and joined in. Talk about a gamer!
Later, when I was processing the pictures I took, I realized how many photographers were there. So many of my pictures had photographers behind the players I was shooting at. I’m guessing that I also made my way into a few pictures I wasn’t posing for.
Picture taking can be hazardous. You never know when the action will be coming to you. But when it does, you must instantly decide how many pictures you’ll take before you bail out for safety’s sake.
My moment, in that regard in this game, was when the West’s Hayden Whitney (Thornton Academy) came clear around the left end in the first half. My concern was tacklers coming from the left who would drive him out-of-bounds to where I was. I jumped out of picture-taking possibility early and Hayden was driven out of bounds about five yards before he reached me. I got a shot of Hayden (41-yard carry) but his eyes are closed.
The crowd was relaxed and so were the players on the sidelines. The coaches were a bit frustrated at times but even they were mellow compared to what I’ve heard at some football games I’ve been to.
I really enjoyed the whole experience. I will probably consider attending next year unless they choose to play it at Fort Kent!
McClelland Miscellanea 