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Tyler Eastman is one of the few who remembered the last time Old Town High School won a football game, on Oct. 26, 2001.
“We played [Mount Desert Island] the last game of my freshman year,” said Eastman, now a 6-foot-5, 300-pound senior offensive guard and defensive tackle for the Indians. “It was Senior Game and we beat them. It felt good.”
Since 2001, Old Town had experienced a football odyssey of the futile variety – until Friday night, when the Indians put the victory back in Victory Field with a 12-6 win over Poland.
That victory ended a 19-game losing streak.
“Everybody was real excited after the game,” said junior tight end and defensive end Travis Shaw, “and I think the momentum from that game is going to carry over big time.”
Poland, though a first-year varsity program, had entered the game at 2-0 thanks to victories over Lake Region of Naples and Fryeburg Academy.
“Poland has only had a program for two years [counting a developmental year against junior varsity teams],” said second-year Old Town head coach Dan Baker. “We’ve been playing football at Old Town since the 1940s. I tried to play off that tradition that we have of playing football at Old Town.”
Old Town scored its first points of the season in the first quarter on a 20-yard run by Troy Niles and a 50-yard pass from sophomore quarterback Jarrett Lukas to Jake Fogarty.
“We took the lead, and I was like, when is all this going to change?” said Shaw. “This had never happened to us before. But we played good defense.”
That 12-0 lead did hold up, as Old Town’s defense overcame a 203-yard passing performance by Poland quarterback Alex Smith to limit the Knights to a single second-quarter touchdown.
“They were undefeated, so it definitely felt good to get that first one,” said Eastman, who led the defense with 11 tackles, including three tackles for losses and one quarterback sack. Nate Emerson contributed five tackles for an Indians defense that yielded only 31 rushing yards.
“We shut down the run, and then [Poland] came out with five wide receivers,” Baker said. “They were rotating guys in and out, and they ran all their plays in the hurry-up, but the kids responded.”
The win came just one week after a serious flirtation with victory, a 2-0 loss to Morse of Bath during which the decisive points came on a blocked punt out of the end zone.
“It was more frustrating than a bad loss because we knew we were so close; it was right on our fingertips, but we let it slip through,” Shaw said.
“Although we didn’t get the win against Morse, we were closer than we had been in a couple of years,” added Baker. “It went right down to the wire, and I think that gave us a lot of confidence.”
Old Town faces a formidable challenge as it seeks to create a winning streak, a matchup Saturday at Winslow. The Black Raiders are 2-1 after a 21-0 win against Morse last weekend, and has been a traditional Class B power under veteran head coach Mike Siviski.
“They’re athletic and quick,” said Baker. “They’re always fundamentally sound, and they get lower to the ball than any team I’ve seen.”
But Old Town has decades of its own football tradition, though admittedly that has been tested in recent years as the number of football players representing the Canoe City dropped to a perilously low level for the long-term future of the program.
But the hiring of Baker – a former OTHS player – has produced a sense of stability, and with it increasing numbers. More than 40 players were suited up for Tuesday’s practice.
“Coach Baker has really been turning it around, getting people excited to play football,” said Shaw. “He’s turning the program around one step at a time.”
And now with a win under their belt, the Indians have some validation that the program is on the right track.
“The team keeps getting better each week, offensively and defensively,” Baker said. “If we can keep making progress, the sky’s the limit.”
WA, Machias to play in prime time
While night high school soccer matches are becoming more and more common in Aroostook County and other locales around the state, they are relatively rare in Washington County.
But two undefeated Down East schoolboy soccer powers, who also happen to be from neighboring communities, will take their rivalry into prime time tonight when defending Class D state champion Machias and Washington Academy of East Machias square off under the lights at the University of Maine at Machias.
The game originally was scheduled to be played at WA, but was shifted to a 7 p.m. start at UMM because of the intense local interest in the rivalry.
“It’s the atmosphere of playing under the lights,” said WA coach Chris Gardner. “When you start games at 4 p.m., you don’t get the same kind of fan support because a lot of people are working. But playing at 7 o’clock gives people the chance to come out, and the kids get really excited about it.
“I look at it as similar to football games in other parts of the state. For us, it’s an opportunity to play a game in a playoff kind of atmosphere without the danger of the playoffs that if you lose, your season is over.”
Wednesday night’s clash will be the first of two meetings between the teams, both of which carry 5-0 records into the contest. Coach Bob Sinford’s Machias club, which has posted four straight shutouts and has not allowed a goal in regulation play to date, will host WA on Oct. 13 to end the regular season.
This marks the second straight year WA and Machias have played a game under the lights. Last year, the Raiders edged Machias 3-2 at UMM, handing the Bulldogs their only loss of the season. Machias defeated WA in their second meeting last fall, handing the Raiders their only regular-season defeat.
Ernie Clark can be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or eclark@bangordailynews.net
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