Mt. Ararat senior defender Ethan Berry surveys the field during a preseason scrimmage at Morse. Cooper Sullivan / The Times Record

When Brunswick and Mt. Ararat meet for the first of two matches at the beginning of October, the high school soccer season will only be halfway complete.

Yet, the atmosphere will mirror that found at a postseason match. For the players and coaches duking it out in the Battle of the Bridge, it might as well be.

“Every time we play Brunswick, it’s like a playoff game,” Mt. Ararat senior center back Ethan Berry said. “It doesn’t matter the seed or how good the team is, it’s always going to be a battle. Energy is up. The student section is booming. You’ll see people you’ve never seen before at soccer games and they’ll be there.”

The teams will play a doubleheader on Oct. 1, with the boys at kicking off at 5:15 p.m. and the girls allowing at 7 p.m. The two teams will face off again on Oct. 22 in Brunswick to close the season, when playoff seeding could be on the line.

The Dragons and the Eagles are expected to contend in always-tough Class A North.

The Brunswick boys’ soccer team has reached at least the regional quarterfinals in every season since 2014. The Brunswick girls have reached at least the regional semifinals in every season since 2016. The Eagles have enjoyed similar success in this stretch as well.

The boys’ squads have met twice in the playoffs since Brunswick coach Mark Roma was hired in 2012, including a 2-0 victory for the Dragons in the 2022 A North semifinals. Brunswick would go on to win the Class A title that season.

“I taught at the high school for about six years before I started coaching, so I was aware of the rivalry but didn’t really get a true feel for it until that first season,” Roma said. “After that first season, I felt the significance of it and was all in.”

Kevin Flaherty, who is entering his second season as Mt. Ararat girls coach, is a relative newcomer to the rivalry. But it didn’t take him long to appreciate the Eagles-Dragons showdowns.

“I don’t care if we play Brunswick in the state championship, in a regular season game, or we’re playing pickup soccer on some field anywhere, it means something different,” he said.

Roma and his Mt. Ararat boys’ coach counterpart, Jack Rioux, say the rivalry is intense because the players all know each other.

“A lot of these kids have been playing against each other, or with each other, from when they’re 7, 8 years old, so it’s fun,” said Rioux, who’s coached the Eagles since 2015. “They know us, we know them. We’ll cheer for each other, until that one game when we play each other, and then we want to take them down.”

In 2023, Brunswick swept the first meetings, with the boys winning 2-1 and the girls winning 5-2. Mt. Ararat got revenge a few weeks later, with the boys winning 3-1 and the girls taking a 4-3 overtime thriller.

“I always tell the kids that these are the games you want to play in,” Roma said. “It’s what’s great about high school sports. The games you talked to your friends about at your 25th high school reunions. I still remember the first game we beat them (in 2013); Eric Kousky headed in the winner in overtime at Peter Gardner Field.”