The Harvest Games

The Fall Sports season kicked off Wednesday night with the first of the harvest games and just like the NFL, we started with the reigning champions kicking off their title defense.

When last we saw the Fort Fairfield boys soccer team, they were besting Monmouth 2-1 for the Class D title.

This year, their season started with a trip to Easton and a rematch of the 2023 Regional Final. Easton came away with the win in this one, 2-0, to hand Fort Fairfield their first loss.

If you're wondering, yes they still do the harvest schedule. And if you're wondering what that even means, a long time ago, they decided to give the teams in Aroostook County a break in the schedule to get the potato harvest in. This is back when technology was less prevalent, but a number of teams still do it. The kids are probably not still as urgently needed for the harvest as they were in 1970, but the tradition has survived. Then again, it's not like AI can pick potatoes.

Anyway, Easton moves up to 42nd in the Power Rankings.

If you skipped the Spring Sports season, that's a look at the newfangled version of the rankings. The website has been completely overhauled since the end of basketball season and there's a LOT of new stuff for you to check out. And more coming very, very soon.

A couple of weeks ago I posted on the Facebook page about the Biddeford ICE tragedy and, rather predictably, got some blowback. Some Maine Wire-adjacent page promised I'd lost tons of follows (spoiler: nope), because how dare I have an opinion and politics should be kept out of sports. Never mind that some coaches aren't sure if their players will show up to practice if ICE happens to be in their neighborhood. I'm pretty sure that's a situation where politics is definitely inserting itself into sports, but what do I know?

So rather than kowtow to the pressure of people who probably don't even follow the Facebook page, much less read this newsletter, I figured I'd zag.

So Mike Shepherd, the politics editor of the Bangor Daily News, joined the podcast this week to talk about the paper's political coverage--especially in this very, very charged climate--the Collins/Jackson race, the legacy of Olympia Snowe, and why you can't really stick to sports because politics infests everything we do.

This was a fascinating conversation and not just because Mike took the conversation to dunk technicals, as is standard practice for the podcast.

I'm aware that there's people who will react with "I THOUGHT THIS WAS A BASKETBALL SITE", even though it's been more than that for a long time, but I don't really care. My north star has always been to do things that I find interesting and if people follow, that's great. And if not, well there's going to be something that's more their speed right around the corner.

Feel free to put your two cents in the comments. I'm also thinking of bumping the podcast to twice a week. We'll try it out.

And if you enjoy the podcast, make sure you subscribe on YouTube or wherever you podcast.

Thornton Academy's Cody Bowker made his AA debut for the Phillies last night and, as luck would have it, they were in Portland to face the Sea Dogs and Roman Anthony.

He delivered.

Thornton graduate Cody Bowker shines in Double-A debut in front of family and friends

The Bowdoinham resident took the mound for the Reading Phillies against the Portland Sea Dogs Thursday night.

Centralmaine.comTravis LazarczykColumnist

Joe Bailey was there after the game to get Bowker's reaction to his AA debut.

With the Fall Sports season ramping up, now is a perfect time to get your business ahead of the highly engaged people who spend a LOT of time on the site on a daily basis, either checking out their team or the other teams in their region or (more crucially) their rivals.

There's a lot of options for advertising. You could sponsor the podcast or your school's team page or this newsletter. It's a great deal.

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Get your business in front of the most engaged basketball fans in Maine

Maine Basketball RankingsLucas McNelly

Also: if you've got your roster, don't forget to upload it to the site so it'll show up when people try to use the new scoring app.

John Karalis has thoughts on how the Celtics can use Paul George.

What the Boston Celtics Can Expect From Paul George

This is the next installment in a series of pieces examining what the Boston Celtics can expect from each of their players this season. Others in the series: Th

Inside The CelticsJohn Karalis

We're still in the County, but with twice the games as Wednesday. Easton heads to Central Aroostook for a boys/girls doubleheader and Van Buren hosts Wisdom and Washburn, respectively.

But the Game of the Day is the Easton/Central Aroostook girls game.

The site is already kicking out predictions (1-1 so far), but there's the usual caveat that it's really, really early and it'll take a couple of games for the Model to figure out the season.

The Model's picks for the rest of today's games are after the jump.