It would be easy for an outsider to overlook the rivalry between Livermore Falls and Jay high schools. The two blue-collar, football-loving towns are separated by their clashing school colors, but little else.

“We don’t have a river between us, just a town line up there, and if you don’t see it, you might not know where one town ends and one begins,” Ron Beedy said.

Beedy helped shape the rivalry in 16 years (1972-1986, 1999) as Livermore’s head football coach, and, coaching opposite Jay coaching legend John Taglienti, was part of many of the games that still define it.

This Friday night, another chapter in the rivalry will be written when the undefeated Andies host the undefeated Tigers. The traditional season finale between the two schools always generates a buzz, but this year’s game harkens back to the glory days of the rivalry, when both teams were perennial powerhouses in the Mountain Valley Conference.

“People are getting excited about it,” said Taglienti, who coached the Tigers for 35 years, from 1951 to 1985. “There’s been a lot of talk about it. Everyone’s looking forward to it.”.

This is not the first time the two schools have faced off with matching perfect records. In fact, it happened twice in a five year span between 1976 and 1980. The Tigers, led by touchdowns from Tom Slovak and Richard Nemi, won the first one, 12-0. In 1980, the Andies gained their revenge for 1976, and for a 33-0 defeat in 1979 in a game for a share of the state title, with a dramatic 18-14 win.

Moment of truth

Both teams expected to battle each other for the conference title in 1980. The Tigers’ wishbone offense was led by the backfield of running backs Rick Levesque and Ray Loon and QB Rick Ouellette, who went on to play at the University of Maine. The Andies relied on a trio of running backs, Doug Kennedy, Dave Heird and Scott Vigue, and QB Rob Miller to run their Power-I.

The anticipation built as both teams rolled through their respective schedules. Once Livermore beat Mexico and Jay knocked off Leavitt in the penultimate week of the season, the sequel to 1976 was on.

“We had a real powerful team, a big physical team. I don’t think we had a close game, even a fairly close game, all season,” Beedy said. “They weren’t as big and physical as we were, but they had a big home run hitter in Rick Levesque, who I think was the fastest kid I’d ever seen. He may still be.”

The Andies were the ones who got off to a fast start, scoring two touchdowns in the second quarter on a two-yard run by Vigue and a 10-yard pass from Miller to tight end Tim Maxwell.

Livermore took the 12-0 lead into halftime, then widened the margin to 18-0 in the third quarter on a 38-yard run by Vigue. Levesque, considered one of the top runners in the state, got Jay back in the game in the fourth quarter, scoring on runs of one and 72 yards to pull the Tigers within four, 18-14.

Jay threatened to take the lead, driving into Livermore territory in the closing minutes. The game turned on a fourth-and-one at the 39, “the moment of truth” as Beedy called it.

“We call a timeout, and we all are thinking Levesque is going to get the ball,” he said. “I mean, here’s a kid averaging eight or nine yards a carry all season. At the very last second, and I have no idea why this thought occurred to me, I told (defensive captain) Alan Drake to have one of the inside linebackers drop down on the center and give them a 50′ look, just in case they ran a quarterback sneak. And wouldn’t you know it, they ran a quarterback sneak.”

“After a measurement,” the next day’s Lewiston Daily Sun read, “it was determined that the try had come up short by about the distance between Livermore and Jay as seen on a road map of Maine.”

Highlight event

That was the first year that the winner of the MVC faced the winner of the Southern York League to determine the state champion, at least in the southern half of the state. The Andies went on to lose to York, 32-8. Regardless of the outcome of that game, though, it was the Livermore-Jay game that was the real championship to people in the neighboring towns.

“It is just a game,” said Beedy, who retired from teaching in 1998 and currently runs his own business selling books over the Internet. “Sometimes I thought they made it too big. But as you go through life, there are those highlight events, and there should be. And the Livermore-Jay game is one of them.”

“They were always close games,” said Taglienti. “If one team seemed superior to the other, you still could never tell (who would win). They were almost always good games. We had some bad ones, a 46-0 game, but that didn’t happen too often.”

Both the 81-year-old Taglienti, who retired from teaching full-time in 1986 but still substitutes, and the 61-year-old Beedy, who has recovered fully from quadruple bypass surgery last spring, plan to attend this Friday night’s game, the 71st meeting between the two teams.

They were in the middle of some of the most intense moments in the long rivalry, but the two old coaches agree that, regardless what the scoreboard says, everyone involved, players, coaches, fans, shouldn’t forget the true meaning of Friday night’s game.

“Just enjoy the moment,” Beedy said.