Leavitt's showdown with Oxford Hills was years in the making

As middle schooler's, this year's senior class played each other many, many times.

Before Saturday’s showdown between Oxford Hills and Leavitt, players on both sides grew up playing with and against each other in youth football leagues. 

When this year’s seniors were in seventh and eighth grade, teams would consistently cancel against both Oxford Hills Middle School and Tripp Middle School, usually citing injuries or lack of players. So, what did they do? Play each other, of course. 

During their seventh grade year the two teams played a total of four times, the next year it was “two or three times” according to Leavitt coach Mike Hathaway. 

The familiarity is definitely there. 

The players on the best teams in Maine middle school football have helped both high schools continue their dominance in the high school ranks, helping Oxford Hills and Leavitt win the 2022 Class A and Class C state titles, respectively. 

In 2019, Leavitt won the Class C championship. The next year, this year’s seniors became freshmen and would go onto win the Class C title last fall. Oxford Hills also won the Class A state championship a season ago, its first of in program history after year after year of excellence. 

Heading into Saturday’s game, which Leavitt won 21-14, Hathaway preached that they don’t let just any Class C team play Class A juggernauts. 

“It’s a huge win,” Hathaway said. “I told the kids before the game that not everybody gets these opportunities. They don’t just let any Class C team play Class A teams. We wanted to put our best foot forward and see what we could do. Oxford Hills, those kids have been playing ours all the way up, they all know each other and it was an intense, physical game and is what high school football is all about.”

Leavitt obviously understood the importance immediately, taking its third play of the game into the end zone via quarterback Noah Carpenter’s 55-yard run. 

“I saw my blockers pull out and around and I saw a hole on the cut back so I just took it,” Carpenter said. “I couldn’t see anyone but to hear everyone around me and the crowd get electric and seeing everyone ahead of me and seeing I was good to go, that was huge. To get up early on Oxford Hills is huge because you never know. Their offense is amazing.”

The crowd, which had jam-packed stands and multiple rows of people lining the entire field’s fence, went into a frenzy after Carpenter’s run and Leavitt rode the momentum. 

Leavitt would score again on the next drive to go up two touchdowns. After Oxford Hills drove down the field late in the first half and scored with 37 seconds remaining to make it a 14-7 game, the Hornets’ offensive line helped Carpenter scamper for a 26-yard run and then gave the star quarterback enough time in the pocket to find Aiden Turcotte for a 29-yard touchdown. 

Both programs have long prided themselves on their game up front in the trenches and Leavitt delivered on Saturday against one of the biggest teams in Maine. 

“I was just trying to be as aggressive as I could up front, get a good push off the line and all of us did a great job of that,” Leavitt lineman Jace Negley said.

The play up front didn’t go unnoticed by Carpenter. 

“They were huge,” Carpenter said of the offensive line. “This whole, entire week Hathaway emphasized this will be a game won by the line. They did a great job of protecting and giving me the time I needed, especially on the play before the half. They don’t do that and we don’t score there so huge kudos to them, they played their hearts out.”

So did Leavitt players go into the game focusing on playing a team that is almost twice the enrollment of theirs and two classes higher? 

“A little bit, I guess, but it’s just another game,” Negley said. “This one meant a little bit more, but we didn’t prepare any differently. We just played Leavitt football and it was a great game.”

“Not really,” Hathaway said when asked about thinking about the class difference. “It’s just like, you’re playing a good team so I don’t think what class they’re in matters. They have good coaches down there, a six-foot-six tight end, a quarterback that can throw it all over the yard and a bunch of receivers so we knew what we were getting into and we knew it would be a good game.”