Maine’s high school football teams will kick off game action for real this week and local radio stations are ready.

As usual, teams like Bangor and Stearns of Millinocket will have hometown stations there to broadcast the action on every down. This year, another team will join this exclusive club as fans of Brewer will be able to listen to a description of every play, whether the Witches are home or on the road.

Dexter’s WGUY (102.1 FM), a sister station of Bangor’s WABI (910 AM), will broadcast all Brewer football games this season, starting with Friday night’s home and season opener against Mattanawcook Academy of Lincoln.

“We’ve been trying to figure Brewer out now for a couple of years, and since they made the playoffs last year, they’re an underserved team, so we figured this would be the time to do it,” said WABI sports director George Hale.

WGUY broadcast Brewer’s playoff loss to Belfast last season and also aired the Class C state game involving Bucksport and Winthrop.

“That was the first time we had football games on there, but we also did quite a few Brewer and Nokomis basketball games on there last winter, so this kind of carries along in that vein,” Hale explained.

As it has the last few years, WABI will air all of Bangor’s games. Both stations will provide playoff coverage of Brewer and Bangor as well.

Having Bangor’s games on a local AM station with a weaker signal than WGUY’s works with Hale’s coverage plan as none of Bangor’s Pine Tree Conference opponents are local teams and many of Brewer’s LTC Class B foes are.

“It makes more sense with Brewer playing all but two teams that are based inside our coverage area for 102.1, so it makes it a real good combination,” Hale said. “Most everyone wanting to catch Bangor games lives in the Bangor area, but when Brewer’s playing teams like Old Town, Hampden, Belfast and others like that, fans of the other teams can hear the games as well.”

Fans of the Stearns Minutemen will be able to catch all their games at two locations on the radio dial as Millinocket’s WSYY broadcasts on 94.9 FM and 1240 AM. Games will air on both frequencies.

Bangor all-sports station WZON (620 AM) will continue to broadcast selected PTC and LTC Class B and C games each week, either on radio, the Internet (Zoneradio.com), or both.

“We’re going to do whatever we think the best game of the week is and have it on radio first, if there’s no Red Sox conflicts,” said program director Dale Duff. “We’ll occasionally have two games if there are local teams involved in good games Friday night and Saturday afternoon.”

One of WZON’s sister stations, Dexter’s WDME (103.1 FM), will also provide weekly live coverage of games. WDME will concentrate coverage on Foxcroft Academy, Dexter and Mattanawcook Academy.

WABI shoots the Bears

Bangor television station WABI (Channel 5) will provide live coverage of four University of Maine football games this fall. The first broadcast will be Maine’s home game with William and Mary Saturday at 6 p.m.

The other telecasts are Sept. 28 (Rhode Island), Nov. 9 (Delaware), and Nov. 23 (New Hampshire).

NESN’s regional roundup

New England Sports Network is incorporating several games involving New England teams into its 2002 fall football broadcast schedule with seven Eastern College Athletic Conference, six Big East Conference, and five Atlantic-10 games, including Maine’s game at James Madison University Saturday, Oct. 5. The Maine game will be aired on a delayed basis at 3:30 p.m. Other A-10 games include Rhode Island at Northeastern (Oct. 12), New Hampshire at Delaware (Oct. 26), Hofstra at Massachusetts (Nov. 16) and Richmond at William and Mary (Nov. 23).

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600, or aneff@bangordailynews.net