Fly, Hawks, Fly
Hermon makes a second half statement and Marshwood wins a game for the ages
This season I've been doing color commentary for LCTV's coverage of Medomak Valley games–something I haven't done since college (I'm very rusty)–and this week we headed north to Hermon.
This was my first trip to Hermon and the facility is impressive and maybe it's because they're 3-0 on the season, but they drew a really nice crowd.
Plus a number of people said hi and a very nice woman gave me a sweatshirt (thanks!), so keep an eye out for that on a future podcast.
Medomak struck first with a Jaydiin Ruiz TD after long drive to open the game and Hermon quickly responded with a Sam Hopkins score after he ripped off a 34 yard run. Hermon scored again with an Ethan Curtis strike to Griffin Dunton.
It was still 15-6 when Hermon went into their 2-minute drill–a 13 play, 74 yard drive that took forever, but ended with a Dylan Yeo touchdown. It felt like a key drive in the game. It wasn't. Hermon scored 21 straight in what felt like 30 seconds in the third quarter and all of a sudden the game went from interesting to a rout. I'll talk about it more on the Overreactions podcast this week, but Hermon was very, very impressive.
But the game everyone's talking about involves another set of Hawks from Marshwood in what's the early front-runner for Game of the Year.
In a game where neither team scored twice in a row, Marshwood and Noble traded blow after blow after blow until the Hawks were left standing in a 52-51 epic that essentially came down to Noble's decision to kick a PAT instead of going for 2 in the second quarter.
“We knew going in. It’s Noble-Marshwood. It’s a classic every single time and I’m glad we could take it this time,” said Hawks quarterback Michael Sbrizza, who sneaked in for the winning two-point conversion with 1:56 to play and was in coverage near Noble’s Ayden DeCato, who was unable to complete a diving, comeback catch of Mark LaPointe’s final throw.
Varsity Maine has a supercut of the scoring.
Steve Craig was there.
Steve CraigStaff Writer
Elsewhere
Ben Havu had 169 yards and 2 scores as Bonny Eagle blew out Scarborough...Iggy McGrath threw 7 (!) touchdown passes and probably won someone their fantasy league this week as Yarmouth's offense kept rolling...Christopher Salamone ran for three touchdowns, including the game winner, in SoPo's win over Cheverus...Alex Martin scored 3 times as Portland rolled...Junah Hayes ran for 165 yards as Morse got back in the win column...Owen Ross had 3 touchdowns as Falmouth gave Biddeford their first loss of the year...Dylan Jewett accounted for 3 touchdowns as Spruce rolled...5 different Trojans scored as TA smoked Westbrook...Stearns gave away a 3-touchdown lead when Brayden Wilson scored three straight, but the champs rallied and survived with a late Emerson Michaud strike to Shayne Grass.
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You don't get a lot of matchups between the top 2 teams in the Power Rankings, but that was the case last night in field hockey when Biddeford headed to Cheverus, who is on a little bit of a roll...
Friday, on an overcast but seasonably warm afternoon (70 degrees at the start), the Tigers sought to beat the Stags for the first time since Sept. 10, 2019 (3-2 at home) and hand them their first regular season setback since Oct. 8, 2020 (1-0 in Gorham), but instead, Cheverus extended its overall win streak to 25 games, its home win streak to 54, its four-season unbeaten streak to 62 and its regular season unbeaten streak to 82.
Whew.
Biddeford gave Cheverus everything they could handle, but the Stags prevailed. Again.
Michael Hoffer was there.
Michael Hoffer
I pushed a fix to the app that wasn't letting people input volleyball scores correctly.
Thanks to everyone who's downloaded it so far. Let me know if you find any bugs and make sure to leave a review.
No word on the Android version yet.
Did you know that acclaimed, Academy Award winning filmmaker Alex Gibney lives in New Harbor?
Well he has a new documentary on Elon Musk (spoiler: not complimentary) and turns out the social media platforms run by the billionaire class won't run ads for it and gee I wonder why?
Steven Zeitchik
Anyway, here's the trailer for Alex Gibney's Musk.
Pablo Torre, fresh off destroying the Clippers, has focused his microscope on Tim Tebow and something called "Life Surge".
And while you probably didn't need Pablo Torre to tell you that an organization that hosts "a structured, full day experience that includes worship, teaching and real- life stories from entrepreneurs, Christian and business leaders and individuals with experience in Trading and Real Estate investing" is a scam (the website just screams "predatory"), it's nice to know someone's at least trying to throw the money changers out of the temple.
And it might be working? Tebow has "paused" his association with Life Surge, which is at minimum what your lawyers will tell you to do when the dogged reporter who just got the NBA's richest owner suspended for a year has decided to make you the subject of his new multi-part investigation.
I miss the good old days when people were just pretending Tebow could be a viable starting quarterback in the NFL.
People who follow Class D have had today's Game of the Day circled for a couple of weeks now and it looks like the nor'easter is going to hold off for it.
Winslow has a pretty strong grip on the 1 seed in D North with 81.6% coming into this weekend's games (I'm holding off and updating this at the end of the weekend).
Freeport is 3-0 and trying to hold off Winthrop (who won handily on Thursday) for the 1 seed in D South.
What we might be looking at is a preview of the Gold Ball game. Each team figures to be a favorite to win their region.
The Model thinks this is essentially a coin flip.
The rest of the Model's picks for today's games are after the jump.