OAKLAND — Even before he threw the passes, Travis St. Pierre knew they would be touchdowns. He knew the slant to Gage Landry would work, and he knew Sam Dexter would make the catch, no matter how many Bangor Rams were draped over him.
“Almost every time I throw a touchdown pass, I know it’s going to work before I throw it, because I can see the holes in the defense,” St. Pierre, Messalonskee High School’s quarterback, said.
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It’s been that kind of season for St. Pierre. With one game to go in the regular season, St. Pierre has completed 65.2 percent of his passes (43 for 66) for 854 yards and nine touchdowns. St. Pierre also has run for 301 yards and three scores, and at linebacker he leads the Eagles with 84 tackles, the third-most stops in the Pine Tree Conference Class A.
St. Pierre’s play is one of the big reasons Messalonskee, at 6-2 heading into Friday’s home game against Lawrence, will be playing in the conference playoffs next week.
“Travis is a special kid. He’s probably the best quarterback we’ve had here, at least since I’ve been here. That makes things a little bit easier offensively, with some of the weapons that we have,” Messalonskee coach Wes Littlefield said.
St. Pierre’s throwing ability, along with top-notch receivers such as Landry (17 catches for 306 yards, three touchdowns) and Dexter (17 catches for 322 yards and five touchdowns), has allowed the Eagles to open up their double wing offense. With 33 more yards, St. Pierre will throw for as many yards as Messalonskee did in 2009 and 2010 combined.
“With Travis, we have that threat to spread the field yet bring them back in. It’s very nice to be able to do that on the field without bringing a bunch of people in and pulling people out, making a lot of changes,” Littlefield said. “I think it makes it tougher on defenses to defend us. They can’t just put a bunch of people in the box on us anymore, because we can shift out of it into our spread formation.”
The Eagles lead the PTC A division in scoring, averaging close to 38 points per game.
“I just love offense and throwing the ball. I love to throw. I like defense, too, but everything about quarterback, scoring touchdowns, throwing touchdown passes, is great,” St. Pierre said. “I actually had a feeling we’d be throwing a lot. We’ve got the receivers and talent to do it.”
This is the offense Littlefield thought he would have last season, but St. Pierre transferred to the Kents Hill School, where he focused on ice hockey. When it didn’t work out at Kents Hill, St. Pierre was back at Messalonskee last spring.
“I played hockey there and ended up coming back. I missed playing football here a lot. Playing football there is not like playing football here. It’s a lot different. There’s no fans, nothing like that,” St. Pierre said.
Although the Eagles are throwing the ball more than ever, the base offense is still the double wing. That means everybody blocks, even the quarterback.
“Travis is a very physical kid, for one. He’s also a very smart kid. He enjoys throwing the football, and he wants to do that a lot. In our offense, we expect our quarterback to get up in there and block as well,” Littlefield said. “It makes it really nice that he can do both of those things. We’ve never really had that since we’ve been running the double wing.”
Reading defenses is something St. Pierre has worked hard at and improved upon, Littlefield said.
“That’s something we’ve worked really hard on the last three or four weeks. Try to read those defenses, rather than knowing in the huddle who you’re going to throw to, whether he’s covered or not. I think he’s done a real good job as a student of the game to try and do that,” Littlefield said.
Defensively, St. Pierre has settled in at linebacker.
“At the beginning of the year, we had him at safety. Probably about midway through, we made the change and brought him up to the linebacker level. He’s probably one of our best linebackers,” Littlefield said. “He started as a sophomore for us at that linebacker spot. Once we got over the hump at midseason, it was like, you know what? We’ve got to pull out all the stops and put our best athlete there.”
Last week’s win over Bangor was Messalonskee’s first over the Rams since joining the conference in 2001. It was just one of many big games the Eagles play down the stretch.
“It was a huge confidence builder. We’d never beaten them. Since we lost to Brunswick, it showed us we can compete with another big team,” St. Pierre said. “We’re hoping to win some big games and show what kind of team we really are. We know we can win against any team, we just have to show it.”
Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242
tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com
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