It’s on. It’s the second-best week of the high school sports calendar, and it’s here. Super Saturday – the one-site, three-class football championship party in Portland and a relatively new Maine Principals’ Association concept that you’ll never hear me condemn – is five days away. Let the hope and hype begin.

Yes, sorry to say this exercise in pigskin overload is forever relegated to No. 2 on the list of can’t-miss student athletic traditions. But it’s a darned close second. Many, many lovely consolation prizes await backstage.

Any given day of February school vacation week in Augusta, Bangor or Portland still squeaks out a narrow victory in the category of Things I’d Rather Cover Than A Super Bowl. Chalk it up to the test of time and the law of averages. Watch two or three sessions of the state basketball tournament and you simply know you’re going to see something special, whereas there is the off-chance that a frosty, full day at Fitzpatrick Stadium will leave us watching three duds.

But I doubt it. And even if the gridiron gods grant us a trio of garden variety blowouts, this week is all about the journey and not the finish line. What a special time for these six schools. They might as well postpone all meaningful lectures and exams until after Thanksgiving.

From a selfish and purely parochial perspective, the Sun Journal staff couldn’t ask for two better stories than Mountain Valley and Lisbon. These two proud programs play into the second or third week of November every year, yet somehow they apply just enough of a different spin to winning that they don’t grow tiresome as campaign ads.

The Falcons did a fabulous job feigning interest in a Western Class B division that looked roughly as challenging as a rousing game of Chutes and Ladders most weeks. Cape Elizabeth employed its first-team offense to solve Mountain Valley’s second- and third-line defenders on the final play Saturday to avoid becoming the Falcons’ eighth shutout victim of the autumn.

Cape can be forgiven, because it’s hard to lose gracefully to the Falcons. Aside from the goodness of the coaching staff’s heart and its desire to groom the kids that are bound to win a championship next year and the year after that, Mountain Valley is eight touchdowns better than anyone else in its division.

Andy Shorey is a winner. Justin Staires is the most talented sophomore in the state, in any class. Thaddeus Bennett, Kyle Dow and Steve Lizotte are tattooed with that trademark Mountain Valley toughness.

Standing in the Falcons’ way for the second time in three years is Winslow, survivor of Class B’s allegedly more rugged region. Don’t believe it. Throw out Gardiner (twice) and most of the Black Raiders’ games packed all the parity of a rap-off between Jay-Z and K-Fed.

Neither team has encountered anything comparable to what will play out on the artificial turf next weekend. It ought to be one for the ages.

I’d say the same thing about Lisbon and Foxcroft, but seriously, what’s left for these two Class C giants to show us? Lisbon drove 96 yards in three minutes on a snow-speckled field to take the 1997 title. Foxcroft landed the final punch and hoisted the Gold Ball in 2003. The Greyhounds delivered the final bite last November, stopping Foxcroft on four plays inside the 5-yard line to protect a 12-7 win.

To suggest an ending fit to top those installments would make the plot of the “Friday Night Lights” TV rendering look realistic. I’ll spare you the screenplay and let reality run its course.

Besides, there’s enough real Hollywood material here. Most high school golf teams that hit the local links this fall outweighed Lisbon’s offensive line. And the Foxcroft community continues to move forward despite a vacuum that dwarfs any graduation losses — the death of head coach Paul Withee’s young wife to cancer last spring.

We’ll witness a feel good story, whichever team wins.

Those two tussles would be enough reason to hit the Interstate ramp and head south. Just for good measure, Gorham and Lawrence will knock helmets in the Class A final.

There’s something sweet about that pairing, in light of the recently failed attempt to push for a fourth football class in Maine. Proponents of such a move (myself included) typically cited the enrollment disparity between the biggest and littlest Class A schools. Now we get to watch a state final between two teams that would have been shuffled to ‘B’ under any reclassification scenario. Got to love that.

Three games. One day. The potential for a thousand memories. Play ball.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. He can be reached by email at [email protected].