Dexter overcame pressure for win Banged-up Tigers faced a Traip football team with nothing to lose

High school football is full of pressure-packed situations for those who play, coach, and follow the sport.

There’s the pressure inherent in a championship game, or any game with playoff implications. There’s the pressure to beat a heated rival. Then there’s the pressure faced by opponents of Traip Academy this year.

The Kittery school, which plays in Western Maine Class C, entered the season with a streak of 37 consecutive losses – which had grown to 43 by the time the Rangers visited Dexter for a nonconference game Saturday.

Yet Traip already had come close to ending the streak, particularly in a 14-8 overtime loss against Madison just a week earlier.

And Dexter, 1-5 entering the game, has struggled with injuries throughout the season, leaving some to suggest that this might be the week Traip’s streak of futility would end.

“We didn’t think they were a bad team,” said Dexter coach Haggie Pratt. “They have some big kids, and they played us pretty tough.”

But whatever the level of concern may have been about Dexter’s ability to preserve Traip’s streak was quelled early in the game when senior tailback Billy Greene – recently returned from a shoulder injury – scored a first-quarter touchdown to give the Tigers a lead they did not relinquish en route to a 16-6 victory in their final home game of the season.

Traip did close to within 8-6, but fullback Mike Lockhart rushed for a second-quarter TD to give Dexter a 10-point halftime cushion, and neither team scored after the break amid deteriorating weather and field conditions.

“The kids were aware of their long streak,” said Pratt, whose team closes out its LTC schedule at Bucksport this Friday and at Foxcroft Academy on Oct. 28. “But I think we just looked at it as an East against West rivalry and we were trying to hold up the East’s end of it.”

As for Traip, it plays at 3-4 Livermore Falls on Friday night before ending its season at home against winless Dirigo of Dixfield on Oct. 29.

Cony forfeits two wins

The Cony High football team has forfeited its two Pine Tree Conference Class A football victories of the season after school officials learned late last week of an ineligible player on the Rams’ roster.

Cony, which lost its first four games of the season, then defeated Mount Ararat of Topsham 25-22 on Oct. 1 and Messalonskee of Oakland 22-13 on Oct. 7. But last Friday school officials learned that a player was on the team in violation of the Maine Principals’ Association’s eight-semester rule, according to school athletic director Dan Bowers. That rule limits a player’s eligibility to eight consecutive semesters beginning with the student-athlete’s enrollment in the ninth grade.

According to Bowers, the player attended several high schools as a freshman and had several breaks in his high school career. When he re-enrolled at Cony last year, he was incorrectly enrolled as a third-year student instead of a fourth-year student.

That discrepancy was discovered during a recent review of the student’s record, and once the error was found he was immediately removed from the team and school officials notified the MPA. The student did not play for Cony last Saturday night in the Rams’ 14-6 loss to Skowhegan.

Bowers said the student had no idea he was violating any MPA rule and did not know the eight-semester rule even existed.

Bowers added that existing procedures that should have identified this problem before the current school year will be reviewed, with necessary changes implemented.