They couldn’t be any more different.

One represents a city parochial/private school, where players could come from everywhere and everywhere.

The other comes from a public school in the woods, where the kids have known each other for years, having all grown up together.

One likes to spread you out with a wide open offense, throwing right and left if there’s a chance.

The other can throw, but it would mostly rather pound you into submission, its featured running back having carried it 45 times for over 200 yards the last time it met its polar opposite in a championship game.

Yes, they basically come from different worlds, have different attitudes, different ideas, different orgins. But they do share the same goal: Win.

We bring you the Trinity of Manchester and the Campbell High School football teams, who will clash for the second year in a row in the Division III championship game Saturday on the Calvetti Field turf at 1 p.m.

It shapes up to be a classic. These rivalry championship games usually are. The two teams eye each other all season, pretty much knowing they’ll square off in the finals. They strategize and sychronize their plans. For example, knowing he wants to run, run, run, run again in Saturday’s game, Cougars coach Glen Costello used load management that wasn’t quite as bad as it is in the NBA with running back Scott Hershberger, alternating series with senior back Logan Daigle. Hershberger twisted an ankle against ConVal and wasn’t seen until the playoffs.

Around here it used to be Bishop Guertin and Exeter in the old Division II in football. They knew they’d see each other in the title game, and one year BG coach Tony Johnson had prospective kickers boot the ball on the frozen Elliott Field tundra in March because he knew a foot might give his team a mile. One year it worked because the Cards beat Exeter on a late field goal in the regular season to give them home field for the finals. The two programs met half a dozen times in the finals from 1997-2008, and one or the other were in the finals either separately or against each other for a 16-year span.

Costello hates the idea of playing a private school in a state championship game. He coached for two years in Lawrence, Mass. “and we had some of the most talented kids I’ve ever come across, but we couldn’t get out of the division because we shared a field with Central Catholic.”

And when he coached at Alvirne as an assistant, Guertin would routinely clean the Broncos’ clocks during that same era of dominance.

What makes it a little different here is it’s new. Pelham moving up to Division II left the Cougars and Pioneers to duke it out. Campbell’s chief postseason rivalry used to be with Monadnock, and there’s still a rivalry there.

Also, keep in mind the fact that Trinity’s program was close to extinction back in 2017, its numbers way down and it swallowed its pride, took the gamble and scrapped its varsity season to play JV only. Then returned a year or two later as a Division III team. Its a huge gamble, but probably less of one in a private school.

“I’m not crying poverty by any means,” Costello said. “But I have very gifted kids and they’re homegrown.”

The irony is Costello actually was coached for one year by current mentor Rob Cathcart when the Campbell mentor was a senior at Alvirne and Cathcart was an assistant there for a year.

The public-private debate is always going on, but Trinity isn’t a power in much of anything else. Competitive, but not this co-dominant.

So here we go. Two worlds collide on Saturday. If you have a chance, it’s worth a look.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com., or @Telegraph_TomK.

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