Brunswick junior quarterback Cam Beal looks to evade a Gray-New Gloucester defender during a Sept. 1 game in Gray. Eric Maxim/The Times Record
BRUNSWICK – The high school football eight-man playoffs begin this week, with all three Midcoast teams seeking deep runs.
Morse (5-2) earned a bye in Large School North, and will await its foe in the regional semifinals. In Large School South, Mt. Ararat/Hyde and Brunswick will host playoff games as football’s second-season begins.
“Everything gets ramped up in the playoffs,” said Morse head coach Jason Darling.
Morse, playing in its third season in eight-man football, is the No. 2 seed and will host No. 3 Mount Desert Island (6-1) in the Large North semifinals. The Trojans edged the Shipbuilders 24-19 in the regular season.
No. 4 Brunswick (4-3) will host No. 5 Gray-New Gloucester (1-6) in a Large South quarterfinal game Thursday at 6 p.m. No. 3 Mt. Ararat/Hyde (4-3) will host No. 6 Lake Region (0-7) in a quarterfinal game Friday night at 7.
The Eagles stumbled out of the gate following a rash of injuries, which had them down to their fourth quarterback just two weeks into the season. Losses to Yarmouth (30-6) and Waterville (24-0) had the Eagles in an 0-2 early hole.
“We made a quarterback because we didn’t have a viable third-string,” said head coach Frank True. “Then during the Yarmouth game, our third string got hurt.”
The team began getting healthy and a pair of wins over Gray-New Gloucester and Greely were followed by a hard-fought 18-12 loss to Morse. The offense caught fire the final two games of the season with wins over Brunswick (64-14) and Lake Region.
“We work them hard in practice and finally we were as healthy as we can be this time of year,” True said. “We started getting into the personnel we have and designing plays that work best for them. We figure out what we do well with the personnel we have.”
While the offense is finding its groove, the defense has held its own, surrendering 132 points all season, just two more than top-seed Yarmouth.
Brunswick is in the postseason for the first time since 2019, when the Dragons finished runnerup in Class B.
The Dragons have had some ups and downs in their first season in eight-man.
Morse’s Miles Norris (middle) carries the ball behind the Shipbuilders offensive line during an 18-12 victory over the Eagles earlier this season at Stadium Field in Topsham. Eric Maxim/The Times Record
“We had a good part of the schedule early, playing a lot of young teams like ourselves. It definitely built their confidence up,” said head coach Mark Renna, whose Dragons have scored an eight-man best 272 points .
After a 52-36 season-opening victory over Gray-New Gloucester, the Dragons fell to Morse 30-28, but bounced back with three straight wins over Greely (42-38), Lake Region (54-20) and Spruce Mountain (60-0).
“It was good to bounce back with a couple of more wins (Greely and Spruce Mountain) and then we faced our rivals (Mt. Ararat/Hyde) and defending state champs Yarmouth.”
Brunswick came up short to Mt. Ararat/Hyde and Yarmouth, giving up 64 points in each contest to close out the regular season. The Dragons allowed 242 total points in seven games — for an average of 34.6 a game.
“They faced a lot of adversity last year and it’s a hard habit to break,” Renna said. “Once you get the first sign of adversity, you revert to back to what you’ve done the past three or four years and it’s like ‘here we go again,.’ … We wanted to get rid of that early and we didn’t see it early on.”
The defense has struggled of late, but is becoming more accustomed to eight-man football, something Renna equated to “playing basketball on grass.”
“They are used to playing 11-man football,” he said. “Eight-man football is completely different, you can get totally exposed. They’re figuring out if ‘I make a mistake, it costs my team a touchdown’, whereas in 11-man you have a buddy covering you as there are multiple layers (of defense). Eight-man you have two layers, three max, and that third layer is really a corner that plays pass first and run second.”
Morse, meanwhile, has been in some close games this fall.
“I think it has instilled in them that you need to play all 48 minutes to win a football game,” Darling said. “It has also built some confidence in them that they can make plays down the stretch.”
That proved to be true early in the season when Morse held off Brunswick, 30-28, denying the Dragons a two-point conversion at the end of the game for their first win of the season. Morse would go on to beat Waterville (16-14), Mt. Ararat/Hyde (18-12), Sprue Mountain (36-8) and Mountain Valley (34-8).
“Our strengths are our leadership,” Darling said. “We have a veteran group, and they don’t get rattled very easily. When things get tough, they know they can rely on one another to do their job.”
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