By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer

SOUTH PARIS – About the only thing that could douse Saturday’s celebratory Homecoming ambience at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School were the public address announcer’s intermittent Red Sox-Yankees scoring updates.

Between a parade, the marching band, a ceremony honoring last year’s baseball state champions and even an appearance by Gov. John Baldacci, there was something for everyone.

If you had tunnel vision for the football game itself, that went pretty well for the Vikings, too. Jim Bower rushed for three touchdowns, and the Oxford Hills defense dominated Brunswick from Baldacci’s coin toss to the game-ending kneeldown in a 27-7 win.

“We moved the ball all day long, and we played great defense,” said Oxford Hills coach Bob Austin. “I’ll take that every day.”

Oxford Hills (2-2) scored three touchdowns in the second quarter and fell a half-yard shy of another one. Then the Vikings held the ball for almost the first six minutes of the third quarter before punching it into the end zone again.

Bower scored on runs of 4, 2 and 7 yards, but the senior did his most damaging work on toss plays outside the red zone. Typically, he hit the corner for double-digit gains before Dragons defenders could put a helmet on him.

He finished with 25 carries for 182 yards.

“That surprised me, because Brunswick’s usually pretty good at stopping the toss,” Bower said. “It was mostly lead blocking. Those guys up front (Justin Desrosier, Jake Cash, Devin Pike, Ron Packard and Ian Monzo) did a great job making a huge hole on almost every play.”

Senior quarterback Ben Ryerson balanced the offense, completing 7-of-11 for 122 yards, including a 24-yard TD connection with Jon Cote.

And the defense was balanced, too, with Chris Jennings and Cash again leading the way. Cote, Monzo and a flurry of underclassmen getting in their licks.

Ethan Sutton and Brad Smith both picked off a pass for Oxford Hills, which limited Brunswick to four completions and 41 yards through the air. Cash, Smith and Keith Brown each sacked Brunswick QB T.J. Thompson in the first half.

“The defense was more of a group effort today,” Jennings said.

“We had six or seven guys making plays, not one or two.”

Brunswick scored first, punctuating a 12-play drive with Thompson’s 10-yard TD toss to Justin Dionne late in the first quarter.

Then the Bower show began, as he followed understudy Brian Trudeau’s 26-yard kick return with runs of 15 and 14 yards. Brunswick (1-3) stopped Bower twice to cap the quarter, but Ryerson hit Cote on third-and-13 for a score on the first play of the second quarter. Alex Waite’s extra point tied it.

Cote recovered a Brunswick fumble on the ensuing kickoff, and four consecutive bursts by Bower covered the short field. Bower followed fullback Waite’s block for the 4-yard score that put the Vikings ahead to stay.

Ryerson’s 17-yard strike to Ryan Hill set up Bower’s second scoring run, making it 20-7 with 22 seconds left in the half.

“I congratulated the team on surviving the bye week,” said Austin, whose Vikings had a 15-day layoff after a win over Lawrence. “So many teams come out of it flat.”

Not the Vikings, said Jennings.

“I could sense that we were going to win this game the way we practiced,” he said. “You win Friday night or Saturday afternoon by what you do the rest of the week.”

Sutton nearly gave the Vikings a chance to put it out of reach at halftime. First, he intercepted Thompson with eight-tenths of a second remaining.

Then he caught a Ryerson bomb down the Dragons’ sideline and dragged the ball down inside the 10.

A roughing-the-passer penalty moved it to the 4 and kept the half alive for one more untimed down, but Brunswick denied Waite just shy of the pylon.

Oxford Hills is one of five Pine Tree Conference teams tied with two victories. There’s a strong chance that only one of those schools will make the playoffs.

“It’s going to come down to strength of schedule and who wants it the most,” Jennings said. “Other teams have struggled with injuries, and we’ve been lucky with that. We just have to keep up this intensity.”