For ‘Friday Night Lights,’ there must be lights

DOVER-FOXCROFT — It’s one of the more iconic settings for a high school sporting event in the Pine Tree State, second perhaps only to the annual basketball tournament each February vacation.

Take the crispness of a cool, clear autumn evening with two rival teams representing similar backgrounds battling for bragging rights and to enhance their championship dreams in front of families, friends, classmates and others in a rite of community bonding.

There’s nothing quite like “Friday Night Lights.”

“It’s small-town Maine,” said Tom Nason, a 1980 Foxcroft Academy graduate who played football for the Ponies during the late 1970’s when Saturday afternoon games were the norm at Oakes Field.

“People just like to come out on Friday nights. On Saturday everybody’s busy, especially at that time of year.”

Indeed, “Friday Night Lights” may have been born in Texas but it lives nationwide — so long as you have the lights.

Now the superintendent of buildings and grounds at his alma mater, Nason is one of the more interested parties these days as the four poles that held the light standards that illuminated Foxcroft’s gridiron for more than two decades are now being replaced.

The old wooden poles that were taken down last week have their own rich history.

Installed during the mid-1990s, they played host to the first night football games at the academy, then were relocated around 2000 from the old football field and its cinder track that ran perpendicular to West Main Street to the current football field and state-of-the-art eight-lane track complex that runs parallel to the highway.

“A crane picked up the poles with the lights still on them, laid them down and reset them,” said Nason.

A few years ago, one of the poles was struck by lightning, requiring its top 10 feet to be cut off and the lights re-set.

The old poles also endured another, more frequent, element of Mother Nature — the often penetrating gusts of wind from the northwest blowing across the largely unsheltered field. 

But they’ve also illuminated many great chapters in Foxcroft football history, among them the state championship squads of 1996, 2003, 2007 and 2012 as well as additional Little Ten Conference title teams in 1997, 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2009.

That’s quite a legacy for a set of light poles, which typically have a lifespan of 25 years.

The poles have just aged out, they’ve started to lean,” said Foxcroft Academy athletic administrator Tim Smith. “The poles were just in very desperate need of being replaced.”

Four new wooden poles, each one a 90-foot-long Douglas fir, were brought to the school by trailer — “They’re as long as you can bring without a police escort,” Nason said — and were laying in the parking lot Monday morning all ready to be erected by Northern Line Construction, Inc., of Dover-Foxcroft.

Ten feet of each pole will be placed in the ground, while light standards weighing approximately 1,200 pounds and including 12 1,500-watt light bulbs will be attached near the top of each pole.

Nason said the base of each pole may be reinforced with added support before the project is completed.

It won’t be that long before the lights will be back in use, with Foxcroft scheduled to host its 2016 Class C North home opener against Madison-Carrabec on Friday, Sept. 9.

For many high school football fans in the area, that can’t come soon enough.

“I think you get a bigger crowd on Friday nights, and the other thing for me is it’s easier to get people to work,” said Smith. “I know in the past when we’ve had Saturday games it’s hard to get snack-shack help, it’s hard to get a chain crew, it’s hard to get an announcer.

“Football season’s hunting season, and Saturdays at 1 o’clock isn’t an awesome time for people to go to a football game. Friday night’s much less of a conflict.”