FARMINGTON – When the Giants played the 49ers one day in mid-September – boys from separate towns in separate counties – they were united in competition, nothing more. They barely knew each other’s names. A game, that’s all it was.

In the gathering darkness of the field below Mt. Blue High School on Wednesday night, sitting on the grass after a long, hard practice, the Giants struggled to remember details of that game, and of the player whose number they now all wear.

They knew his name, Lucas Dolloff, who was 11 like most of them, and from Dixfield, just a stone’s throw away from here. They remember how he had died, just weeks ago, in a freak accident while playing outside his house. And they knew his jersey number – 7. It gleams, emblazoned in blue on their helmets, every practice and every game.

“We’re respecting him,” Zak Kendall said. “I think it’s cool to support his family,” said Chris Couture.

“I don’t know why, but I like it,” said Jeff Lane.

They don’t know much about Dolloff. They only really knew him on the field.

“He played rear guard and linebacker,” Tyler Sennick said. “He was pretty good,” piped Danny Reed.

Kids all over the Western Mountains are wearing 7s this season in memory of Lucas, known by his family as an inveterate sports fanatic and a cheerful, wonderful, happy boy.

“He’s played football since he was about 5 – flag football,” Lucas’s mom, Heidi Dolloff, said Wednesday. “He was on the championship team last year,” she said, “and his team was doing very well this year.”

Dolloff was also a championship wrestler and baseball player. “He was very athletic,” Heidi Dolloff said. “He loved sports.”

The way local people tell it, the wearing of 7s spread. Teams and leagues decided to wear the number independently of one another. Parents and children thought it up spontaneously.

For Mt. Blue Area Youth Football, the idea came when Bruce and Bobbi Tracy read about what happened to Lucas. Son Brandon Thompson had played Lucas Dolloff weeks before. “My husband and I talked about doing something to show we cared,” Bobbi Tracy said.

She and elder son Dustin spent an entire day cutting 7s out of paper. Then they distributed 175 of them, along with a newspaper clipping about Dolloff, to league players.

Sitting on a lawn chair watching their boys tackle each other – rather viciously – in one of the last practices of the season, Diane Price, Debbie Madison and Bobbi Tracy talked about Dolloff’s impact on them all.

“This is anybody’s child,” Tracy said. “The number seven kind of represents that – a reminder of how precious life is.”

The gesture has touched the Dolloffs. “We have had pictures sent to us, that all the children over there have put number 7s on their helmets,” Heidi Dolloff said. “The neighboring communities have really shown so much support and sympathy. I just think it’s wonderful. It’s so sweet.”

Brandon Thompson told his mother he wears the number to remind him of the little boy who couldn’t play football anymore, Tracy said.

“It seems to be children that are thinking up the most wonderful ways to remember,” Heidi Dolloff said.