TURNER - Hard to say if Leavitt Area High School can recreate the carnival atmosphere of Saturday night's homecoming football game in, say, November.

Wins such as the Hornets' authoritative 28-7 thumping of Winslow are the kind of performances that may give us a chance to find out.

If these are the two best teams in the Class B division of the Pine Tree Conference - as has been speculated at the quarter pole of the season - the rest of Eastern Maine is a giant leap behind the Hornets.

"Everyone didn't think we were going to win, but we work hard," said junior Josh Strickland, who rushed for two touchdowns and set up a third with a blocked punt. "We weren't sure we were going to win, but we were going to die trying."

Kolby Youland saved Strickland's special teams swat from trickling through the end zone, transforming a sure safety into a titanic touchdown less than four minutes into the game.

Leavitt (3-0) led and controlled the tempo for the duration, much to the delight of the 2,000 mostly partisans who jammed the bleachers and surrounded the chain-link fence to watch it.

"He's our fastest guy," Leavitt coach Mike Hathaway said of Strickland, "and we knew that (Winslow) had a couple of bad snaps last week against Belfast. We thought we'd have a chance with him coming off that end. It got us off to a fast start, which is what we need against a team like Winslow."

Tyler Green rushed for 114 yards and the other Leavitt touchdown, a 3-yard surge that answered Winslow's only score in the second half. Strickland added 77 yards, including a pair of 1-yard scoring dives.

Youland (13 tackles), Drake McBreairty, Phillip Russell and Jon Letourneau led a Leavitt defense that limited Winslow (2-1) to 161 total yards.

It was only the Hornets' second win over Winslow in Hathaway's seven-year tenure. The last came in 2004, when current University of Maine starting defensive lineman Jonathan Pirruccello was a Leavitt senior.

"I'm so proud of our defense, because Winslow has scored a lot of points on us in past seasons," Hathaway said.

Winslow's lone threat was Scott Siviski's 14-yard TD pass to Charlie Kriegel with 1:15 remaining in the third quarter. That and Siviski's extra point kick cut Leavitt's 14-0 halftime lead in half.

The Hornets promptly saddled up Green and Strickland. Green played the role of Mr. Outside with bouncing bursts of 16 and 26 yards. Strickland hurdled a would-be tackler for 15 more up the gut, setting up Green's score with 11:18 left.

"We saw them on film and thought we could do something," Siviski said. "Maybe it was because it was their homecoming, but they were a lot more fired up than we were tonight."

After the Black Raiders went three-and-out on their ensuing possession - their fourth such foray of the night - Leavitt applied the exclamation point with a 10-play, 59-yard, nearly six-minute march.

Winslow's leading rusher, 230-pound fullback Eric Bezanson, mustered only 57 yards on 14 carries.

"What happened was what we thought might happen," said Winslow coach Mike Siviski. "We're young in a lot of places."