Berwick is approximately 175 miles from Dover-Foxcroft. Poulin Field in Winslow is only three miles, give or take, from Keyes Field in Fairfield. The football field at Cheverus High School in Portland offers a great view of the city’s skyline, and a view of some of the best football the state’s ever seen.

On Saturday afternoon, if you had a decent Internet connection or a smart phone, you could have been in all five places at once.

Social media has given sports fans everywhere access to instant updates. When something happens, it takes seconds for the information to cross the globe.

That phenomenon was on full display in Maine throughout Saturday afternoon, as folks watching five high school football regional championship games blew up Twitter with score updates and other information.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Twitter, the service is at its basics, a news and blog feed with a short attention span. Users must keep their updates to 140 characters or less. This paragraph is much too long to be a Twitter update, or tweet, as they’re called.

What Twitter lacks in in-depth analysis, it more than makes up for with its simplicity. It’s the perfect outlet to release a score update.

Starting at 12:30 p.m., a Maine high school football fan anywhere in the world could follow along with all the games. This fan could learn that Cheverus and Thornton Academy were going back and forth in the Western A final. This fan could see York block a Marshwood extra point to maintain a 14-13 lead, only to give up another touchdown to the Hawks and lose, 21-20.

A fan could see that Winslow’s Justin Martin intercepted a pass, and learn just a few minutes later that Martin picked off another, this time returning it 73 yards for a touchdown. If this fan had a strong imagination, he or she could hear the Poulin Field crowd.

Cony’s early 10-0 lead at Lawrence raised eyebrows of fans nowhere near Keyes Field. Thornton Academy’s win at Cheverus, snapping the Stags’ 34-game win streak, brought gasps from fans miles, maybe oceans, from Portland.

Twitter is not without its faults. The information comes quickly, but there’s no guarantee it’s always correct, as my colleague, Matt DiFilippo (@Matt_DiFilippo), pointed out in a tweet on Saturday afternoon.

“According to the tweets I’ve seen, Winslow is either up 16-6, 17-6, or 21-6,” DiFilippo wrote.

When Winslow’s Dylan Hapworth made a 26-yard field goal to give the Black Raiders a 3-0 lead in the second quarter, some tweeted that it was a 15-yard field goal, forgetting to add the 10 yards for the end zone. That’s OK, because the greater point, the one anyone following really wanted to know, was made. Winslow had the lead.

On Friday night, I misspelled the name of Mt. Blue running back Calan Lucas when tweeting an update on his fourth quarter touchdown. Hopefully, the mistake did not cost @TLazarczykMTM any followers.

Chris McGary, the Assistant Head of School for Boarding at Foxcroft Academy, followed along with the Ponies’ win over John Bapst from a hotel lobby in Jakarta, Indonesia.

“2am (sic) in hotel lobby and ppl perplexed by excitement,” McGray wrote.

According to my colleague Bill Stewart (@BillStewartKJ), the cheer that rose at Keyes Field when the Thornton Academy-Cheverus final score was announced equaled the cheer that came when Lawrence scored.

Rob Kennedy called the Winslow-Dirigo game at Poulin Field with Rob Munzing. When that game was over, Kennedy rushed to Fairfield to catch the end of the close Cony-Lawrence game.

Twitter is nice, but Kennedy rushed to Fairfield anyway. Knowing what happened is great, but if you can, seeing it happen will always be the best.

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com