For many, autumn is the best time to travel in Maine.

Temperatures are tolerable, tourist traffic has abated, and the changing foliage is a blessing in color.

The Brewer Witches have experienced all of that and more during the first seven weeks of the high school football season.

Five game nights have been spent on the road, usually far, far away from the high school campus on Parkway South.

One trip was relatively local, up Interstate 95 to Old Town.

The other sojourns have been the envy of Pine Tree State cartographers. Friday nights in Naples (Lake Region), Gorham, and Turner Center (Leavitt), and a Saturday afternoon in Wales (Oak Hill) have involved bus rides approaching a thousand miles.

But what could have been a fatiguing fact of scheduling life has been just the motivational ticket for a Brewer program seeking to retool after graduating all but two starters from its 2002 team.

“All the travel made the kids realize how big an obstacle it was,” said Brewer coach Ed Ortego. “We didn’t play well the first time we went on the road [a Week 1 loss at Lake Region], and it’s been a rallying point since then, to play hard coming right off the bus.

“We were determined not to let it happen again.”

Brewer not only is undefeated on the road since that loss to Lake Region, it’s undefeated, period, since then.

With only challenging home games against 4-2 Hampden Academy this Friday and 6-0 Winslow on Halloween remaining in the regular season, the Witches are 5-1 in Pine Tree Conference Class B play, 6-1 overall, and on track to return to postseason play for the third straight year.

Ortego, for one, is relieved the road will not beckon the Witches again until perhaps sometime during the playoffs.

But as the team arrived home from its 16-7 victory at Leavitt early Saturday morning, few in the traveling party had any comment about the situation.

“We got home so late, most of the kids were asleep,” Ortego said.

Rifle club to hold fund-raiser

The Brewer High School Rifle Club, seeking to stay viable in the wake of budget cuts, will hold a fund-raising shooting event from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Rifle events will include running deer, standing deer, high-power, and .22-caliber rifle target shooting. There also will be shotgun sporting clays with three target throwers.

Events will be set up for adults and children, with awards given to the top three shooters at the end of each day.

The shoot will be held on a range built by David Astbury on the Bradbury Brook Road in Clifton. Take Route 9 east from Brewer about 16 miles to the intersection of Old Route 9 and Route 9. Take a slight left there and go a half-mile to the intersection of Old Route 9 and Chick Hill Road. Turn right onto the Bradbury Brook Road, and there will be signs leading you to the range.

Bring your own rifle, shotgun, and ammunition. There is no entrance fee, but a fee will be charged for each event and participants may take part in as many events as they want as many times as they want. Refreshments also will be sold.

All proceeds will benefit the Brewer High School Rifle Club, which has 27 students signed up and hopes to field a team to compete against similar high school clubs statewide this winter. The club needs to raise funds for travel, targets, ammunition, coaching stipend, awards, and equipment repair for the upcoming season.

For more information on the team or the shooting event, call Lee Ohmart at 989-7304.

Ernie Clark may be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or eclark@bangordailynews.net