Bangor High School’s season-opening 42-35 football victory over Lewiston featured offense, plenty of offense.

But while Lewiston’s offense featured the all-around play of senior tailback Jared Turcotte, who fought off cramps to finish with 159 rushing yards, a 54-yard touchdown pass and a 40-yard TD reception, Bangor’s attack was based on balance.

The Rams rushed for 283 yards on 41 carries, an average of 6.9 yards per try despite the fact that Alex Gallant, penciled in as the starting tailback at the beginning of preseason, lined up almost exclusively at tight end and had just one rushing attempt for coach Mark Hackett’s club.

Instead, junior tailback Shane Walton led the way with 175 yards and a touchdown on 19 tries, while junior fullback Kyle Vanidestine added 67 yards and two scores on 12 carries.

That ground game benefited from strong play along the line of scrimmage featuring tackles Robert Seccareccia and Adam Kearns, guards Ben Bambrick and Mark Sturgeon and center Jon Thompson.

“I was pleased with the energy of the linemen,” said Hackett, whose team returns to action Saturday at Mount Ararat of Topsham, which dropped a 16-14 overtime decision at Messalonskee of Oakland last weekend. “It was just a great team effort.”

Bangor also gained 155 yards through the air, highlighted by touchdown passes of 55 and 48 yards from junior quarterback Ian Edwards to senior split end Tom Crews, and a 40-yard strike from Edwards to junior tight end Ryan Weston.

“We knew coming in they would be more diversified on offense,” said Lewiston coach Bill County. “We knew they would throw better than they have in the past, and they hit a couple of home runs on us. Their quarterback made a couple of nice passes, and their wide receiver ran great patterns.”

Bangor needed all of its 438 yards of total offense to repel a Lewiston team that seemingly gained confidence as the game went on and came within a yard of forcing overtime until Walton stopped Turcotte just short of the goal line with 10 seconds left in the game.

While it’s just one win for Bangor, it could loom as a big victory in the grand scheme of the Pine Tree Conference Class A playoffs. A year ago, Bangor lost to Lewiston in the opener, and it came back to haunt the Rams as they finished 5-3 and missed the playoffs by one game. Both teams figure to be prime players in the postseason chase again this fall.

“We looked at it as a playoff game,” said Hackett.

Bapst shines, Tigers working

Tim Wilson’s return to the sidelines at Dexter High on Saturday ran head-to-head into a veteran John Bapst of Bangor program with high aspirations of its own.

And it was Bapst that may have sent a message to the rest of the LTC Class C ranks, using an early turnover to take charge late in the first quarter and roll to a 51-14 victory.

“We’ve had some games in the last couple seasons when we thought we had the advantage going in,” said John Bapst coach Dan O’Connell, “but we’d never put a game together where we were the better team and then just gone out and showed that we were that better team. Today I think we did that.”

The Crusaders amassed 401 yards, 183 on the ground and 218 through the air, with new starting quarterback Charlie Merritt completing 10 of 11 passes for 163 yards. John Bapst put the game away with four second-quarter rushing touchdowns, two each by tailbacks Nick Smith and Kyle Gallant.

“We started a little slow,” said O’Connell, whose team hosts 0-1 Bucksport at Cameron Stadium on Saturday night. “Once we got our feet wet, our line took over and I think we pushed them around a little and kind of wore them down and that was the tale of the tape.”

Wilson, who coached Dexter to a pair of state titles during his first stint as head coach from 1966 to 1971, inherits a program in rebuilding mode but willing to battle.

Saturday’s game was scoreless until a pass interception and return set up Bapst’s first touchdown, a 5-yard run by Smith late in the first quarter.

“We played them even for the first quarter, and a kid made a mistake, he made a mistake by throwing back against the wind,” said Wilson, whose team will host 0-1 Orono on Saturday. “That’s a mistake a kid is going to make, trying to do something he shouldn’t have.”

Dexter subsequently had injury issues at the quarterback position, as starter Ben Spizuoco left the game midway through the first half and Steve Robinson, the incumbent starter from last year, took his place despite a bruised shoulder that limited his throwing ability.

But perhaps the best sign for the long-term health of the Dexter program came not during the game, but earlier in the day.

“We had 50 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders down here for our program [Saturday] morning,” Wilson said, “and I’ve got 30 kids in the middle school coming out. There’s enough people who are saying to me that they like the way I treat their kids and they want me to continue working with their kids. That’s all I can do.”

For John Bapst, in contrast, that future may be now.

“We have some depth, we have some experience, and we’re trying to manage that as best we can and give these guys a break when we can,” said O’Connell. “I think particularly in the third quarter that paid off because we weren’t quite as tired as we would have been in years past when we were only playing 13 kids.”