Spooky (Post)Season
Play-off games on Halloween. What could go wrong?
We had one playoff football game yesterday, a yawner, as MDI blew out Houlton in 8-man action.
In class A football, Massabesic got a first quarter TD run from Nolan Pomerleau and it held up when they denied Sanford's 2-point conversion after a Jayden Franco score in the 4th.
In the other game, Noble scored with 10:05 left to cut the Thornton Academy lead to 19-14, but couldn't get any closer and Connor Ayoob closed things out to give the Trojans a 27-14 win.
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I've done this before, but not in the last couple of years.
It's a preseason poll! Feel free to go in and rank as much as you feel like you have a handle on. It won't impact the rankings at all, but it's always nice to see how much (or how little) of a consensus there is going into a season (and how that pans out).
Vote early. Vote often. This is not a secure election, so go nuts.
Lucas McNelly
Lucas McNelly
Haley Jones has a great story about the "new Mainers" on the football team at Lewiston. We all know the history of immigrants playing soccer there, but it's great to see that they're able to branch out to other sports like tennis, swimming, volleyball and football.
Freshman Hamza Mohamed was born in Kenya and moved to America 11 years ago. He grew up playing soccer but decided to try football this season. He acknowledged he was afraid of getting injured, as well as not understanding the plays.
“Whatever you’re scared of, eventually you’re going to get used to it,” Mohamed said. “My first time (in pregame practice), I was terrified. I was in front of (junior Collin Churchill) and then he just grabbed me by my pads, and he kept on walking, pushing me forward. If you’re always going to be scared, then why live life if you’re always going to be scared?”
In other, not-great Haley news.
Bittersweet news to share — Thursday will be my last day at @sunjournal . It’s been an incredible two years, and I’m so thankful to every coach, player & athletic director that made me feel welcome. I’ll be rounding out my last week with a few more games💗🫶🏼 don’t be a stranger!
— Haley Jones (@haleyjonesmedia) October 28, 2025
She'll be missed. Remember, Haley, you still have the lanyard so you can come to games and hang out.
Check out her podcast episode.
I can't say I was expecting this.
Thanks to everyone who has listened, rated, and shared the podcast.
Guess I need to keep doing episodes. Don't worry, I'm lining up some fun stuff for the start of basketball season.
Game of the Day
There's 2 candidates for Game of the Day and one of them is a playoff game, so let's go to 8-Man Large South.
This is what we refer to as "up for grabs".
Mt. Ararat and Yarmouth met in Week 1, a 44-20 win for the Eagles, but that was Week 1. Since then, Yarmouth has ripped off 7 straight wins. Mt. Ararat lost to Camden in Week 2 and they've now won 6 in a row.
Both teams have top 10 scoring offenses, but if you're looking for a weakness, it's the Yarmouth defense that's giving up 25.5 ppg, which is 8th best in 8-man (Mt. Ararat is first). They are 4th in the state in scoring offense (Mt. Ararat is 7th), so the easy take here is a high-scoring game favors Yarmouth and a low-scoring game favors Mt. Ararat.
Then again, last week we had 2 top 5 defenses playing each other and they combined for 63 points. Go figure.
The Model says Mt. Ararat by 8.8.
The rest of the Model's picks are after the jump.