Tom King

The helpless feeling during last weekend’s lopsided high school football game between Bishop Guertin and Goffstown wasn’t just on the Grizzlies’ side of the field.

It wasn’t easy on the other side, either.

Oh, sure, you say. A 68-7 final, how could they have not run up the score, especially when it was 61-7 at the half?

They didn’t. The starters were gone by midway through the second quarter – almost unheard of. Five different quarterbacks, one removed from the game when he didn’t follow specific instructions to simply hand off.

Last Saturday’s game is a symptom of what’s been going around the state the first few weeks of the season: Bad teams vs. good teams, producing lopsided margins.

It just shows, unless you’re, say, a Pinkerton or an Exeter,with an immense number of students and constant winning tradition, how tenuous your competitive nature is with your high school football program.

Goffstown is Exhibit A. The Grizzlies were in the Division I state title game two years ago vs. Nashua North. The week before the Guertin game they were pasted by Pinkerton 59-6 and gave up 40 to Keene. And let’s not even get into Alvirne, who the rest of the state has no clue about and has gone winless the last two seasons and is on track to do the same ever since being placed back in Division I. How about last year when Lebanon put up 77 on Hollis Brookline a year ago, who somewhat returned the favor with a 47-0 win over a the Raiders last weekend as graduation, bad numbers and not exactly the greatest plan going forward with new coaches turned them from title contenders into a punching bag. Souhegan was scheduled to play them this weekend, and the Sabers already put up 60 on Hillsboro-Deering/Hopkinton. A co-op team.

Yours truly covered three games two week ago. The combined scores: 135-27.

Tell us it’s easy to produce a competitive high school football team. We see it in hockey, too. Bad teams with low numbers and young players not able to physically match up against many opponents.

“I’ve always felt that it’s tough for some of these schools – and tough for us sometimes, too – if you’re not Exeter, Pinkerton, or what Jimmy Lauzon has done at Londonderry, there’s a top tier of schools,” Guertin coach John Trisciani said. “They’re not going to win a state championship every year but they’re just reloading.

“But for a lot of these other schools, if they’re smaller schools or the feeder program is not there, or if it’s down, and there’s a class (with low numbers) ….”

Then there’s a problem. Trisciani remembers the days with the old Division I and II, 10-12 teams each.

“With the combined divisions, now there’s 21 teams in Division I. To think all 21 teams will be able to match up with each other is probably kind of naïve.”

North coach Chad Zibolis will have to deal with the Goffstown issue next weekend; his only focus was this weekend’s Battle of the Bridge game vs. arch rival Nashua South. But last year , Zibolis said the Titans had only nine or 10 freshmen. Or some teams are so depleted they have to play freshmen at the varsity level. Not many of you will remember this, but Londonderry when it first broke away from Pinkerton with its own school back in the early 1980s – yeah, we’ve been around awhile – had a so-called Freshman Rule. And that rule was they weren’t allowed to play in varsity games in any sport, no matter what.

Today some schools couldn’t field a team if that were the case.

Privately, a few coaches are concerned about the numbers down the road.

“I think it’s hurting everybody,” Zibolis said, “and I think COVID hurt a lot of teams. You’re still seeing that effect. People who found their way out of COVID and still have decent numbers, you’re kind of lucky.”

Or very young.

“A team may look like they’ve got a decent number of players,” Zibolis said, “but they might all be new players.”

Either way, the mismatches this season seem plentiful. Manchester Central has lost by three to four TDs every week.

But that’s close compared to some of these other blowouts.

The Federation running time rule doesn’t help. It’s a 35-point margin or more in the second half, and the clock still stops on penalties and scores. Please, keep it running, no reason to stop it.

So if you’re planning on seeing any high school football soon, take a look at the teams playing. If you see a close, competitive game, consider yourself very, very lucky.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.