The Maine Shrine Lobster Bowl Classic is known first and foremost for its benevolence, having raised thousands of dollars for the Shriners Hospital for Children since the game’s inception in 1990.
But the contest, which features the top senior high school football players from the previous season, has evolved from a one-sided rivalry into a hotly contested clash each summer.
The West leads the series 15-5, and won the first nine games of the rivalry by an average of 15 points. But the East has won three of the last four meetings, including a 17-16 thriller last summer on a touchdown in the final minute.
Three of the last six games have been decided by one point, leading both teams to think they’re poised for victory in the 21st annual edition of the game, which is scheduled to kick off at 4 p.m. today from Waterhouse Field in Biddeford.
“We’re going to go out and try to win,” said East wide receiver and running back Rashon Edgerton of Brunswick. “Bottom line, everyone wants to win. Football’s competitive, and all these guys here are competitive.
“It’s going to be a fun game.”
Whether the game will be high-scoring or low-scoring is less certain, given that the winning team’s score has ranged from six (West, 2000) to 55 (East, 2003).
“The interesting part of the Shrine game, and it happens every year, is that it’s kind of a mystery,” said East coach Bill County of Lewiston. “It’s really difficult to get a good scouting report. You know which kids won awards and which kids have a tremendous reputation. Sometimes those big kids come through and are the stars of the game, but more often it’s some young man you didn’t know about at all who steps up on Saturday and opens everybody’s eyes.”
Both teams are expected to run spread offenses under County and West head coach Kevin Cooper of Bonny Eagle of Standish.
The East will be quarterbacked by Eric Theiss of 2009 Class B state champion Leavitt of Turner Center and Ronnie Turner of Lewiston, and also boasts a deep running contingent including Edgerton, Lonnie Hackett of Bangor, Christian Powers of Lawrence of Fairfield, Josh Strickland of Leavitt, Bill Wetherbee of John Bapst of Bangor, Dylan Nutter of Messalonskee of Oakland and Josh Gaudette of Waterville.
“They obviously have some guys walking around their camp who are pretty impressive-looking kids,” said Cooper. “We know about their Class A backs like Hackett and Powers and we’ve heard a lot about the Leavitt players because they had a great year, so we are certainly not expecting to be the most talented team on the field on Saturday.
“The East might be the most talented, or at best it will be about the same. We’re not going to win on talent, we’re going to win on togetherness and how hard we play and how prepared we are. We’re going to have to beat a good football team on Saturday.”
Not that the West is without it’s own share of quality players. Cooper’s team boasts two of the three reigning state championship quarterbacks in Jackson Taylor of Class A Windham and Nic Crutchfield of Class C Dirigo of Dixfield, along with Steve Trask of Thornton Academy of Saco.
“Any time you can get Jackson Taylor and Steve Trask and Nic Crutchfield on the same team, those were three of the best in the state last year,” Cooper said. “We think we’ve got some real good skill players, and we think we’re pretty strong and physical up front so there are a lot of strengths to this team.
“We just hope that on Saturday we can be very, very exciting on offense and put on a good show for the fans. On defense we want to be able to fly around the ball and be physical and make big plays. If we can do that our offense will have the ball back and we’ll have the chance to score a lot of points. That’s what we want to do.”
