PITTSFIELD, Maine — Homecoming weekend was fast approaching at Maine Central Institute, and suddenly the Huskies’ football team didn’t have an opponent.
Camden Hills of Rockport was the scheduled foe, but when the Windjammers suspended operations last week because of safety concerns related to a lack of players, MCI officials — particularly athletic director Jim Leonard — acted quickly to fill the schedule void.
The unbeaten Huskies now will host the prep team from the Hyde School of Bath in their homecoming game at 5:30 p.m. Friday.
Hyde, 1-1 with a 32-12 victory over the Lincoln County club team and a 47-20 loss to the Tilton School of Tilton, New Hampshire, already had a regular-season bye this weekend — something MCI was trying to avoid.
“It’s a tough situation when you pick up a bye in the middle of the season or toward the end of the season that you weren’t anticipating,” said MCI coach Tom Bertrand, “but at the same time we completely understand the need for Camden Hills to make the decisions they needed to make for the safety of their program.”
MCI has outscored its opponents this year by a combined 246-18 en route to a 4-0 record, which leaves it on track for a first-round bye in the six-team LTC playoffs come late October.
“If things play out the way we’re hopeful they will, that would mean we’d have two byes in a season,” said Bertrand of the scenario before Hyde replaced Camden Hills on the schedule. “And when you’re talking about high school athletes, our kids prepare to play week in and week out and to not be able to play a football game in a week is really a hard thing for them.”
MCI had at least one other option to fill its sudden schedule vacancy. Maine’s Class D South has just nine teams, leaving one with a bye each weekend. Traip Academy of Kittery has that bye this week, but logistics for an MCI-Traip game couldn’t be worked out so Hyde was approached.
“We don’t use the psychology behind a bye week they have at the pro level or at the college level,” said Bertrand. “We just feel like we want to be able to let the kids play football and stay sharp and be able to get out onto the field and really get into the routine each week.”
Friday night’s homecoming game with Hyde will be a noncountable contest against an unfamiliar opponent.
“We’re certainly going to treat it like an exhibition but we also know we’re playing a prep program and all of those questions that people will have about whether it’s the right choice or not, there will be Monday morning quarterbacks on that all day long,” said Bertrand. “We just feel that for us here and now it’s in our best interest to try to play football every weekend that we can so we’re fortunate Hyde was able and willing to come play an exhibition with us.”
