GARDINER — Gardiner Area High School football coach Pat Munzing knew the weather forecast for Friday night was not pretty, but for the first time, it did not make much of a difference.
For decades, rainy days meant muddy conditions for Gardiner’s home football games at Hoch Field.
Now, with the Tigers playing on a new turf field, weather conditions are less of a factor. The same is true at Cony High School in Augusta, which now plays its home games on a turf field.
The teams first met in 1892, a 62-4 Cony victory. Now, it is the longest-running rivalry in Maine high school football. And this year, that rivalry enters a new era with the arrival of two modern playing surfaces. The teams are set to play at 7 p.m. Friday at Hoch Field at 40 W. Hill Road.
“I was talking with my dad (Rob Munzing) and hashing out the week, and one thing that came up was how, in the past, you’d plan for playing on a field that was going to be beat-up and run-down,” Pat Munzing said. “It was kind of a realization of: ‘Wait a minute. We don’t have to worry about that anymore.’”
Wherever the Cony-Gardiner game is played from now on, such variables will no longer be concerns for both teams.
Originally planned for 2019, both schools’ turf field projects were stalled for more than two years, following construction delays and financial complications stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Even last summer, when there was optimism the projects were nearing completion, additional delays prevented the fields from being ready by the start of the season.
Cony’s $2.2 million project would not be completed until October, and Gardiner’s field upgrade, at more than $1 million, was not ready until the 2022 spring sports season. The delays put the facility situations at the schools in flux, with the Rams and Tigers being forced to play most of their 2021 home football games at Messalonskee High School in Oakland.
“It was hard because we were finally back to football, and we couldn’t be at home on the new turf where we wanted to be,” said Cony senior running back Eli Klaiber. “It’s a different environment when you’re at home, so it was pretty frustrating when they were like, ‘Yeah, you’re playing at Messo.’”
The new turf field at Cony High School in Augusta receives finishing touches. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file
There has not been a year since 1917 in which Cony and Gardiner have not met on the football field. Even during the 2020 pandemic season, which saw tackle football sidelined, the schools competed in a seven-on-seven contest, and they met again in preseason action last year as the Tigers were in Class C and the Rams in Class B.
The 2021 preseason matchup at Messalonskee’s Veterans Field was, technically, the first meeting between the rivals on turf. This year, though, is different: It is a countable game, it is toward the end of the season, rather than in August, and, most important, it is at one of its proper homes — Hoch Field.
“It’s the first game on the turf at either school, so that’s big,” Munzing said. “There’s just a lot of excitement about Cony-Gardiner in general, because it’s always such a big community event, and this year you’ve also got that going on. It’s going to add even more to the atmosphere.”
The last countable matchup between the teams came on a different Hoch Field, surface in 2019, which Cony won 15-6 on natural grass. That game turned into a muddy affair, which will not happen Friday night because there is no dirt to be kicked up.
“I remember warming up and doing routes on there, and there was just mud everywhere,” Klaiber said of the game three years ago. “I was a freshman so I didn’t even really play, and I was still covered in mud just doing that before the game. (Not having to deal with that) is a big plus of having the turf.”
Rivalries, though about tradition, also go through changes. The first Cony-Gardiner game in 1892 saw none of the fancy scoreboards, stadium lights, modern helmets or even forward passes. Those changes came as football evolved.
The new turf fields, in that sense, are just a continuation of an evolving football experience that will continue to change in the years and decades to come. Major changes, after all, do not always receive rave reviews, but the advantages of the new playing surfaces are evident to today’s players and those from the past.
“I just love it,” said Pat Mertzel, a member of Gardiner’s current sideline chain gang who played for the Tigers from 1988 to 1991. “I just wish we had something like this back when I played. The turf is so much more forgiving, and I’m happy for the kids now that they’re able to play this game on it.”
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