By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer

There are two ways to handicap the Pine Tree Conference Class A football season.

One is the brave way, sizing up the Eastern Maine contenders this morning and calling out the four teams who will survive and the others who will be dropping their pads and helmets into cold storage by Halloween.

Or you can wait until the end of Week 3, when Lewiston is finished battling Bangor, Mt. Blue and Skowhegan, consecutively.

You might wonder what Lewiston did to deserve this, or if they have any choice words for the schedule-maker. In the heat of two-a-days, it was difficult to find a PTC coach who didn’t rank those three schools in some order atop their own mythical power rankings.

“Yeah, if you want to know who has what in the conference, come see me after those three games,” said Lewiston coach Bill County. “I should be able to tell you.”

It creates the unusual situation of a team with nine senior two-way starters being at least a slight underdog in its first three contests. That’s life, after you follow a breakthrough trip to the conference championship game in 2002 with back-to-back losing seasons.

Lewiston finished 2004 with wins over Mt. Ararat and Edward Little after dropping its first six games. If there’s a silver lining to this fall’s foreboding schedule, it’s that the Blue Devils should be battle-tested and ready to start their finishing kick much earlier.

And don’t think that County or the Blue Devils have conceded anything in September, not with third-year starter Chris Ford at quarterback and Jared Turcotte returning at tailback after topping 1,000 yards in a short sophomore season.

“Bangor is still at the head of the pack. Mt. Blue is big and physical. Skowhegan probably has the best back (Aron Chambers) in the conference,” County said. “We hope to win one or two of those games. It’s tough this year with only four teams making the playoffs. You could go 5-3 and stay home.”

Eaton on the fly

Oak Hill will cover plenty of territory in the spread-out Class B division of the PTC, starting tonight with a long road trip to Old Town. And the Raiders face numerous unknowns in a season that will see multi-time Eastern Class A champions Gardiner and Waterville drop down and pick on schools their own size.

One thing is certain, however: Oak Hill should flaunt the fastest player on the field most Friday nights or Saturday afternoons.

Zac Eaton, a 6-foot, 200-pound senior tailback out for football for the first time since his freshman season, was timed at 4.6 seconds in the 40-yard dash at a summer football camp. Yes, that’s approaching Division I quickness.

“He can fly,” said Oak Hill coach Bruce Nicholas. “Schools are going to be taking a look at him because of that speed.”

Nicholas isn’t worried about Eaton’s lack of football experience. He can coach technique, even hands. Speed is another story.

“We lost him a couple years ago and all I could think was, Oh my God, no!'” Nicholas said.

The longtime coach is enjoying the payoff this season with ample talent at quarterback, tailback, fullback and wingback. In a recent scrimmage against Madison, Eaton joined Wally Rines and Eric Daniels in rolling up more than 200 yards in limited playing time, while Josh Jillson went 5-for-10 through the air.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m tooting our horn, but in three or four offensive series we were up around 300 yards,” Nicholas said. “It’s the most talent I’ve ever had in the backfield at one time. We always had one or two studs, but nothing like this.”

Bye, bye, bye

The bye week is back, much to the chagrin of Eastern Class A coaches.

With Gardiner and Waterville escaping to Class B and Windham moving to Western A, the PTC is left with 11 teams. There’s no way of playing an equitable round-robin schedule or putting the teams in equal divisions.

It shakes out with an eight-game schedule, a week off in the middle and only four teams making the playoffs, down from eight last fall.

“Nobody ever likes it. You can’t play anybody, because everybody else in the state has a game,” said Oxford Hills coach Bob Austin.

Most local coaches look at their schedule and say life could be a lot worse, though. Lewiston gets an extra seven days in Week 8 to prepare for archrival EL.

Oxford Hills catches its break after a three-game opening stretch that includes Mt. Blue and Skowhegan. And Mt. Blue sits out Week 5, which noted bye-basher and coach Gary Parlin sees as a built-in opportunity to get his gang healthy for the playoff push.

Crossing over

If you want to know how unpopular bye weeks are though, consider that coaches in Class C prefer the crossover games in their new schedule to taking a Friday or Saturday off.

“I’d rather play a crossover than not play at all,” said Jay coach Mark Bonnevie, whose team kicks off the East vs. West series tonight with a rematch of the state championship game against Bucksport.

With Cape Elizabeth and Maranacook moving up to Class B this year, Eastern and Western Maine both had gaps in their nine-team leagues. And although matching up with teams on the other side of the state is preferable to bye weeks, crossover games are not the ideal, Bonnevie said.

“If you’re on the wrong end of one of those crossovers and you lose to one of the teams that you’re tied with at the end of the season and they had an easy crossover game, you’re not going anywhere. You’re staying home,” Bonnevie said.

Liike Jay, the rest of last year’s Western Class C playoff qualifiers, Livermore Falls (Foxcroft), Lisbon (Mattanawcook) and Boothbay (Orono), were matched up against playoff teams from the East. Winthrop drew John Bapst, while Dirigo will play Stearns.