Gold Balls (and Wind)

Saturday was a full day of Championship Soccer and Field Hockey (with a little bit of football for good measure), a beautiful day with a couple of instant classics made even more interesting by some windy conditions.

Oh man, the wind.

I started the day in Bath for the Boys Class A title game between Camden Hills and Scarborough, a game the Model pegged as ever-so-slightly in Scarborough's favor (52.4%)

And for a while, that looked to be on-point. Scarborough was the better team in the first half. I'd say they controlled possession 60/40, but the second half was primarily Camden and as the half rolled on, we started to wonder on press row how much of that was the wind. Because the wind was absolutely a factor. It was probably 30 MPH, on average. When the keeper kicked into the wind, the ball would be held up. Crosses would curve away from the goal. There was a real question if the game would be decided by the wind doing something weird. And how would you even score going against it?

In the end, after 2 overtime periods, we went to penalties. Camden's keeper got a save on (I believe) the second shot, so Camden's 5th man needed to bury this to seal the Gold Ball.

That's Camden's first Boys Soccer Gold Ball in 33 years.

Side note: I'm going to start putting stuff on Bluesky now, as Twitter seems to be getting worse by the day, so if you've got an account, come find me. Oh yeah, on Threads too. Both Threads and Blusky are having a moment as users leave Twitter, a trend that started when Musk bought it and has increased as the site has gotten more chaotic. Blusky, specifically, reminds me of Twitter before it went public (i.e. the good old days).

I'll be adding people to this Starter Pack of Maine Sports accounts (coaches, teams, journalists, etc) as they join and/or I find them.

In the girls game, Scarborough scored first in the second half--into the wind!--but Bangor added 3 goals with the wind at their back to seal the Gold Ball.

Here's the Karter Eldridge goal that gave the Hall-Dale boys their first-ever Gold Ball in soccer.

The podcast is back after a slight delay, this time with the great Michael Hoffer of the Forecaster.

We go over the Gold Ball games from Saturday and preview the football Regional Finals (which kind of look bad?)

And, obviously, we get into basketball and talk about a couple of teams from Hoffer's coverage area that could have good seasons (spoiler: he thinks Dave Halligan will get to 600 wins).

This is a really fun chat.

You can watch it on YouTube or listen wherever you consume podcasts.

Don't forget to subscribe and if you like it, leave a nice review. It truly helps.

From the Fort Kent sideline during their game against NYA:

"Our Players are homegrown not handpicked"

This is an A+ sign if you appreciate trolling.

It kind of looks like it says "Our haters are homegrown...", which is also fantastic.

Rounding up some of the other games.

Imagine having not one, but two overtime game winners in a State Championship game in your career.

I don't know who the Peter Webb of soccer is, but...yikes.

The Model finished the Soccer and Field Hockey playoffs with the following record:

Boys Soccer: 68-18 (79.1%)
Girls Soccer: 69-15 (82.1%)
Field Hockey: 42-5 (89.4%)

Brewer's Brady Saunders had a huge game for USM.

If you've got a minute, the USM roster has a heavy contingent of Maine kids, including a strong freshman class.

ESPN has a nice story about Cooper that is a companion piece to the story Chad Finn wrote a couple of months ago.

Cooper had a big game last night against Kentucky and a not great final minute. He'll figure it out, I'm pretty sure.

Windham lost a valuable member of their basketball community.

There's people like this all over the state, heroes who are rarely known outside the limits of their school district, but are essential to making the basketball community thrive.

He will be missed.

The Celtics lost last night in the NBA Cup, but in the Knicks/Sixers game, everyone lost.

Finally, Andrew Hart of MaineHighSchoolFootball.com sent me this PBS documentary about high school basketball in Montana that you might enjoy.

Almost basketball season!