CALAIS – It’s getting closer to pigskin time Down East style with a varsity football team made up of students from Baileyville and this border city.

Area residents want to start a cooperative high school football program that would include youngsters from both Woodland and Calais high schools. They eventually would play in LTC Class C against other high school teams from around the state.

The fans behind this project are parents of students. They recently formed the St. Croix Valley Silverados Booster Club.

There also is a plan afoot to build a $1.2 million football stadium in the Industrial Park. “We’re going to get most of that donated,” said booster club member Ian Pratt, owner of Pratt Chevrolet on the River Road. “[I’ve] done a lot of cost analysis on how to make it work and not have it come out of the city coffers. We don’t want our taxes raised,” he added.

But it all has to start with a request and that’s what happened Thursday night.

More than 20 parents and students attended the Calais School Committee meeting to outline the details. After about an hour, the school committee gave its blessing so the group could move forward with starting a team. The Baileyville School Board gave its blessing earlier. Both school committees also approved a letter of intent to the Maine Principals’ Association so that the team could play in the LTC.

The next step is for school administrators from Baileyville and Calais to attend an MPA hearing. If the MPA approves their request, boosters hope to see a team playing in the fall of 2007.

An hour later, armed with facts and numbers, the boosters met with the City Council to request use of land in the Industrial Park first as a practice field and eventually as the site for a new football stadium.

The City Council turned the request for the land over to a subcommittee for review. Members of the property committee along with the city manager and others plan to walk the field on Monday.

The football bug started about three years ago. Pratt was the catalyst behind the project.

Two youth teams – a peewee squad and a bantam one – were created. They now play in the Fundy Football League in St. Stephen. And they’ve been a success. The bantam league team recently won the Maritime Provincial.

“They beat the best from [New Brunswick] and [Nova Scotia],” Richard Ford, president of the boosters, said Thursday.

But the players had nowhere to play once they outgrew that level.

“The 14- and 15-year-olds are now done with their football careers unless we explore the possibility of what more can we do here in Calais and beyond,” Ford said.

So parents got together and sought to create a varsity team, and they’ve already started to raise money. Pratt has agreed to donate the funding for the football equipment, which will cost more than $15,000. An anonymous donor agreed to spend $12,300 for the start-up costs, and another $5,000 for miscellaneous costs also was donated anonymously. The group will need another $10,000 to pay for referees and travel costs.

Once built, the field, which is a long-term project, would be used for something in addition to football. The boosters would like to put a rubber track around it so that track teams from Calais and Baileyville could compete.

“We could host regionals here,” Pratt said.

Given its proximity to the border, the field also could be used by St. Stephen athletes for a fee, for such things as rugby and soccer. The all-purpose field also could be used for jamborees and concerts as well as craft fairs and other events.