Life is about what you look forward to — the people you can’t wait to see, the things you can’t wait to do and the places you can’t wait to go. When you work in sports media, you’ll find that much of your work encompasses all three.

While the industry always keeps us on our toes, there’s definitely a part of the job that becomes routine. You get used to cold winter nights covering basketball games, track meets in freezing rain in April or stifling heat in June and, of course, Friday nights and Saturday afternoons covering football.

Although there’s never a bad day working in sports, I truly cherish those fall evenings and afternoons spent by the gridiron. Football is a sport I love above all others, and the more time I spend watching the game, the more the places I do go become home. Even now, only a game into my second season of covering football in central Maine, I’m starting to feel that way.

Before I came to central Maine, I found myself at home on the sidelines covering games at Ellsworth, Bucksport and Mt. Desert Island high schools in Hancock County. It was an area nowhere near the size of my new coverage area, but the teams were usually quite competitive, and I grew to love the settings in five years of covering football.

Each place, you see, has something special about it. At Ellsworth, which had only been playing varsity football for four years when I arrived, fans packed themselves on a hill — not grandstands — beside the field, making for a distinct atmosphere. At Bucksport, I held dear the nights walking the sidelines chatting with Rick McHale, a longtime team photographer, with the Penobscot Narrows Bridge in the background. And at MDI, well, there are few things more surreal than watching football at the footsteps of a national park.

In the first week of the 2021 season, my last covering football for The Ellsworth American and Mount Desert Islander, my past and future would meet. With Ellsworth/Sumner and MDI both playing Saturday games that week, I made a trip to central Maine for Bucksport’s game against Winthrop/Monmouth/Hall-Dale. I was immediately enamored with the bleachers built into the hill at Shuman (then Maxwell) Field, and the way the trees at the south end of the stadium and the buildings at the edge of downtown Winthrop at the north end brought together Maine’s natural beauty with one of its communities and gave me chills.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Shuman Field would be a place to which I’d return once I left Hancock County for the Morning Sentinel. I was excited a a week in advance when I learned I’d be covering the Ramblers’ clash with Freeport there last year, and now that a beautiful new turf project is nearing completion, Friday nights in Winthrop are about to become even more breathtaking. It’s now, though, just one of many places I’ve come to love.

During Skowhegan’s run to the state championship last year, I probably made more trips to Reginald Clark Memorial Field than anywhere else. Whether I roamed the sidelines or found a spot in the press box, I found myself at home chatting with the locals and watching quality football under the Friday night lights and wide-open skies. Even when I returned to cover a Skowhegan team with a brand-new coach and new players last week, the feeling that I belonged there remained.

Just 10 miles away, you can’t beat the scenery at Madison, where the way the pine trees hang over the bleachers is a truly special sight. It’s a town that revolves around their Bulldogs on fall Fridays, as does Fairfield when their own Lawrence Bulldogs rumble at Keyes Field. The best part about Lawrence games is the way you’re immersed in the action; between the fans lining every inch of the fence to your proximity to the field, you’re in the midst of it all.

Speaking of places that put you right there, Winslow’s Poulin Field does it well. From the black and orange everywhere from the parking lot to the stadium itself, little kids running around playing pickup games to the Black Raiders’ physical, blue-collar brand of football, it’s the quintessential fall Saturday experience. Even if it’s no secret that I prefer high school football on Friday nights, the Winslow experience is a special one.

There’s something also to be said about Maranacook’s Ricky Gibson Field of Dreams, where the remoteness of the area puts your sole focus on the game; about Nokomis, where the tall, outdoor press box puts you above the action rather than beside it; about Waterville’s Drummond Field, where the stadium’s location within a neighborhood gives the games a community feeling. The specialties of each stadium even go right down to the food, as my colleague, Dave Dyer, will attest — and Gardiner’s Hoch Field, I agree, takes the cake.

There’s more I can’t wait to see, too. There’s Messalonskee, where I covered a preseason game last year but will be experiencing Friday nights for the first time this week; Mt. Blue, where I can only imagine how scenic the setting might be in the mountains; Cony and Oak Hill where I’ve gone for other sporting events but have yet to cover football. As soon as I’ve attended games at those places, they, too, will join the list.

Yes, sometimes in life, you find yourself at home fast, fast enough that you know your place after a single visit. It took only one season and a week of another for me to reach that place here, but home is home — and for me, it’s what the central Maine football experience has already become.

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