Referee Jeff Mertzel talks to captains from Cony, left, and Lawrence before the 2023 Class B North title game in Winthrop. (Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer)

Friday night football is a national high school tradition that goes back decades. Here in Maine, teams across the state have turned on the lights on Friday night for years. A few schools stick to Saturday afternoons, but Friday night has been the domain for high school football. In so many towns across the state, a lit up football field on a Friday night is an inviting beacon of fall.

Lately, for a few reasons, Thursday Night Football has been horning in on Friday’s turf.

With fewer experienced officials available to work varsity games, Thursday games were introduced a few years ago as a way to ease the Friday night pressure. Ideally, a crew of five game officials will work a high school contest. Some were being played with four officials, and missing that one set of eyes can mean a few missed calls, a few missed spots and a sloppier game for everyone. Nobody wants that.

A number of older officials retired during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, and not enough younger people stepped in to fill those spots. Think back to the last high school game you attended, and you’ll probably remember at least one loudmouth chirping at the refs, maybe in language that would embarrass the most foul-mouthed among us.

“Fan behavior is a factor,” said Mike Floridino, the president of the Southwestern Maine Board of Football Officials, a group that provides referees to high school games in Cumberland and York counties. “We’re not there to get rich. We’re there because we love the game of football and want to give back.”

So Thursdays became an option. This season, there are 14 varsity games scheduled on Thursday nights, beginning with three games this week: Windham at Noble, Madison at John Bapst, and Sanford at Biddeford. Last season, 13 games were played on a Thursday night, including five on Oct. 10, but some of those had been rescheduled in anticipation of high winds expected over that weekend.

High school football game officials meet with the Gardiner and Falmouth teams prior to a 2023 game at Hoch Field in Gardiner. (Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer)

The official boards across the state typically ask schools to voluntarily schedule games for Thursday night, said Allan Snell, a retired official who still serves as the officials’ liaison to the Maine Principals’ Association Football Committee.

Speaking Tuesday afternoon, John Bapst football coach and Athletic Director Dan O’Connell said everything feels sped up this week. His team’s season-opening game against Madison is set for Thursday night at the University of Maine. So Tuesday feels like a Wednesday, and Wednesday will feel like a Thursday, with the traditional team dinner the night before the game.

“On the front end (of a Thursday game) you feel the crunch,” O’Connell said.

Joel Stoneton has been involved in high school football for decades, first as a player at Winthrop, then as the coach of the Ramblers, then as the school’s athletic director, and now as the coach of the Winthrop/Monmouth/Hall-Dale co-op team again. He’s seen the number of officials shrink over the years, and he knows playing a few games on Thursday is a necessity. That doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.

Stoneton said his team has made the annual game against Mountain Valley a Thursday game. This season, it comes next week, on Sept. 11.

“They break up the monotony (of a season),” Stoneton said. “The kids like it.”

The Ramblers’ homecoming game against Morse is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 2, one of those out-of-necessity moves due to the lack of refs. A homecoming game on a Thursday either extends the jubilant weekend a day or cuts the gate of what normally is one of the most well-attended games of the season. We’ll see.

An official follows a play during a 2024 scrimmage between South Portland and Cony in Augusta. (Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer)

For O’Connell’s Crusaders, Thursday games have been a blast. John Bapst doesn’t have its own home field, and playing games on a Thursday has allowed it to host games on some of the best fields in the Bangor area, including the University of Maine’s Alfond Stadium, Husson’s Winkin Complex, and Bangor’s Cameron Stadium. Last season Bapst played four games, half its regular-season schedule, on a Thursday.

Playing Thursday allows O’Connell and his staff to run a light practice Friday before getting out to scout an upcoming opponent. Saturday can be used for a more intense practice early in the day. After this week’s Thursday game, the Crusaders play next Thursday at Maine Central Institute. If somebody has to play on Thursday, O’Connell is fine having it be his team.

“It’s one of those things, through nobody’s fault, somebody needs to play on a different day,” O’Connell said. “For years, we only had home games on Saturday nights. For us, playing on Thursday was borne from the idea of we play where we can. Being the only game in town, it’s good for our kids. It’s good for us at the gate. It’s been a win all the way around.”

The officials shortage may be seeing a turnaround. Snell said more people have been taking the class to become football officials in the Bangor area. In the southern end of the state, Floridino said numbers are also creeping back up. Those newcomers need to cut their teeth a season or two with youth football or sub-varsity games, though, working alongside seasoned officials. There have been times when inexperienced refs were thrust into a varsity game in recent seasons, Floridino said. That break-glass-in-case-of-emergency scenario became more common.

“I’d say in the last two years, we’ve had more recruits than the previous eight to 10 years combined,” Floridino said. “But it’s a big jump from lower level football to varsity.”

Hopefully, those newcomers stick with it, and they’re ready to do varsity games in the coming seasons. Then, Thursday night can be a fun schedule quirk instead of a nearly weekly occurrence.