Football Digest, a pocket-sized, monthly magazine you might find on the shelf at your local big-box pharmacy, occasionally profiles a National Football League old-timer in a segment entitled “The Game I’ll Never Forget.”

Dwight Clark shares his thoughts about The Catch. Vance Johnson recalls how badly John Elway’s throws stung his hands on The Drive. Bart Starr discusses the joys of frostbite and breaks down The Ice Bowl. And so on.

Fifteen years I’ve been covering high school football for the Sun Journal, and before that leads to labeling me an “old-timer,” let the record show that a decade-and-a-half is precisely half my lifetime. That equals a couple hundred games, thousands of student-athletes and millions of minute details that seemed colossal at the time but overflowed the memory bank long ago.

But there is one season, one game, one goal-line stand, one drive, one group of young people and one triumph that I will never, ever forget until they bury me.

November 24, 1997. Class C championship. Lisbon 19, Foxcroft 14.

Looks mundane on paper, doesn’t it?

Whatever I wrote then and say here about the game won’t be nearly enough. The night air was colder. The snowbanks surrounding Pete Cooper Field at Lawrence High School in Fairfield, higher. The bone-jarring hits, harder.

The Lisbon team that refused to die, tougher.

Six minutes remained in the game when the Greyhounds, trailing 14-13, fumbled the ball at their own 6-yard line. Foxcroft’s objective seemed frighteningly simple: Hand the ball to record-smashing tailback Ben Preston once, maybe twice, put the championship on ice and begin smiling for the cameras.

Of course, such common-sense conclusions should be drawn for merely normal high school football games, played in September on a crisp Friday night or sun-drenched Saturday afternoon.

Nothing normal about this game. Nothing at all.

Snow big deal

Lisbon and Foxcroft learned early Saturday morning that their Class C final would be pushed back to Monday at 4 p.m. thanks to eight inches of snow.

None of it was a surprise to the Greyhounds, whose Western Maine championship victory the previous week came at high noon on a Monday after another early-season storm. Two days later, the extended forecast told a similarly frosty tale.

“Before every game the last four weeks, we’ve heard about how bad the weather is going to be,” Lisbon coach Dick Mynahan said before the state final. “Let’s just play the game.”

In the pre-game analysis, Lisbon-Foxcroft appeared to be a classic clash of styles. The reigning state champion Ponies trampled the Little Ten Conference, averaging more than 40 points per game behind Preston, whose career yardage exceeded 4,000.

Lisbon allowed the fewest points (71) of any team in Maine. Even that total was deceptively high, with half the touchdowns scored either by opposing defenses or second-string offenses.

“They like to hit,” said Foxcroft coach Paul Withee. “They’re very aggressive. They get right after it.”

Doubters pointed out that the Greyhounds hadn’t encountered anyone as quick, creative and tough to tackle as Preston. In the first quarter, the doubters had a field day. Running against the grain on a playing surface that held up well under the duress of snowplows and dump trucks, Preston scored on runs of 34 and 85 yards to put the Ponies in front, 14-0.

His potential knockout punch, an 80-yard jaunt early in the second quarter, was nullified by a clipping penalty. That seemed to rouse the Greyhounds, who subsequently stopped Foxcroft deep in their own territory on an interception by Jason Brooks.

Keep that name in the back of your mind.

“We used two defenses, and they’re the defenses we used all year,” said Brooks. “The coaches just told us we had to try to keep Ben Preston from getting any extra yards.”

Battling back

Foxcroft’s game plan probably said the same thing about Brooks, but that task was a two-headed monster. When Brooks wasn’t wreaking havoc in the defensive secondary, he was passing or running the ‘Hounds to glory with equal dexterity.

Brooks made his first statement of the day with his feet, covering 60 yards on an option keeper to make it 14-7. Then came the interception, which made it a manageable seven-point deficit at the half.

“All I kept thinking about,” said defensive lineman Mark Judd, “was the Gold Ball.”

Putting that hunk of metal in the trophy case became more of a reality in the third quarter. After Keith Booker sacked Brock Hartford to stifle another promising Foxcroft drive, the Ponies punted the ball out of Lisbon’s end zone.

Nine plays and 80 yards later, half that distance covered on a sneak by Brooks, Jim Smith surged in on third-and-goal from the 1. Smith narrowly missed the extra point, though, and Foxcroft protected a 14-13 advantage.

The Ponies played the game of field position to perfection thereafter, and when the Greyhounds coughed it up within snowball-throwing distance of their own goal line midway through the fourth quarter, the game might, could, would and should have been over.

Stand or fall

Smith, who might have met the 145 pounds printed on the roster after an all-night carbohydrate-loading binge, didn’t see it that way. He left no doubt about those convictions in the huddle.

“I made sure I had eye contact with everybody,” Smith said. “I let ’em know that this is what we played all year for. We didn’t come here to lose. We were gonna stop ’em, then we were gonna go down and score.”

Nate Laita, a 6-foot-4, 240-pound fullback and tight end, dropped his head on first down and slashed through the heart of the Lisbon defense. Laita fell close enough to the chalk to give the illusion that he scored, but a linesman rushed in from the far sideline and pointed vigorously at the turf, ruling him down by contact inside the 1.

Close enough for Hartford to take the snap and lean across the plane of the goal line? Maybe. Laita took the handoff again, however. Five Foxcroft players raised their hands heavenward as if to signal touchdown, but the bear-hug by Judd and Tim Ridley was enough to hold the lunging back at bay.

“That’s nothing new for us,” said Mynahan. “I’ve told Tim Ridley and Mark Judd that nobody’s ever gonna read their names in the paper, but I know they were in the middle of that pile.”

Foxcroft fed Preston on third down. Again, the upraised arms. Again, Ridley and Judd provided the resistance, this time with ample assistance. “A pack of dogs,” as the home announcer in Lisbon Falls might say.

Denied on three consecutive bids up the middle, Foxcroft let Preston test Lisbon’s east-to-west pursuit on fourth down. Matt Schreiber overpowered his man at the line of scrimmage, grabbed Preston’s left ankle and dropped the back in his tracks.

March to victory

The Stand appeared little more than a nice consolation prize when Smith stumbled ahead for a yard and Brooks overthrew Dave Wellington. On third-and-9 from the 3, however, Brooks rolled right and located an open Wellington in the flat at the 24.

Third down became Brooks’ personal playground on Lisbon’s version of The Drive. After Smith softened the Ponies with two straight smallish gains, he bolted to his right and turned around near midfield, where Brooks found him on the numbers with 1:46 to go.

“We worked on the two-minute offense all year,” Brooks said afterward. “I believe this was the first time we really used it.”

One incompletion later, Brooks tossed a quick-out to sophomore Jeremy Shorey. The future minor-league baseball pitcher alertly escaped out of bounds to stop the clock after a gain of 17 yards.

Brooks then scrambled up the middle for 15 before taking a short loss and misfiring to Wellington to set up another third down. Smith, whom the humble, Campbell Conference Player of the Year Brooks tagged “the MVP for Lisbon High School,” snagged a late throw over the middle. He broke a tackle at the 10 and squirted loose to the 5.

Thirteen plays after the most intense three minutes of his career began, Brooks rolled to his left, saw that primary receiver Shorey was blanketed and lofted a pass to the back left corner of the end zone in a location where only Wellington could corral it.

Wellington cradled the ball and dragged his left foot in bounds.

Anyone left behind that evening, getting a head start on decking their house with Christmas lights along Route 196, likely heard the roar from an hour north.

Touchdown. State title. One of the greatest high school football games in Maine history.

How about an encore?

Foxcroft fielded the squib kickoff and had time to run four fruitless plays, the last a desperation heave by Hartford that fell harmlessly to the turf between Wellington, Smith and Brooks.

Brooks, whose status was uncertain when he suffered a shoulder injury the summer before his senior season, took a knee and watched the crooked numbers on the scoreboard clock morph into goose-eggs. It subtracted one yard from his amazing numbers: 149 on the ground, 131 through the air. He was 5-for-8 for 82 yards on a winning march that all us sports junkies dream about directing at least once in our lives.

Don’t know about dreamers, but the 1997 Lisbon Greyhounds were doers.

“People will probably say what they’ve said all year,” said Brooks. “That Lisbon was lucky. Lisbon wasn’t lucky. We knew we were a championship football team. There were 11 guys on the field and another 20 on the sidelines that pulled together in the second half and got it done.”

Six years to the day … well, minus a day of snow and a day of clean-up … Lisbon and Foxcroft will journey to Portland and film the sequel.

Again, Foxcroft is an irresistible blend of finesse and power. Again, Lisbon is a walking, talking set of intangibles with precisely the right number of exceptional seniors and productive sophomores.

The names have changed. Jason Brooks has become Chris Kates. Dave Wellington goes by the name of John Tefft. Matt Schreiber and Mark Judd, meet Tony Walker and Elijah Treffts.

I’m picking Lisbon, primarily because I know what these kids are made of.

Most of all, though, I’m simply hoping for something unforgettable. Again.

Kalle Oakes is sports editor and can be reached by e-mail at koakes@sunjournal.com.

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