All around the state, teams are scheduled to play six games, one-third of their schedule, before the holiday break. And many coaches would like the schedule-makers to get a lump of coal in their stocking for it.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous to play six games before Christmas,” Oxford Hills boys’ coach Scott Graffam said. “We’re going to play six games in 10 days — four days of practice and six games.”

“They’re worried about all of the tournaments during Christmas break. They’re worried about schools that have midterms,” Graffam said. “Find out which schools have midterms, and schedule it differently. It’s ridiculous to have a three-game week before Christmas. There’s only one more game that they have to put some place else.”

Coaches cite the lack of practice time as the most glaring drawback to the schedule. It can be particularly frustrating to new coaches or those with young teams.

“It’s crazy. The season seemed to start a week later and yet we’ve already jammed up six games before we go into the holiday break,” said first-year Buckfield girls’ coach Ryan Wilkins. “It’s hard. It doesn’t give us a lot of practice time.”

Buckfield had one game postponed due to weather last week, but that was little solace for first-year boys’ coach Kyle Rines, who pointed out that teams only have two weeks to prepare for the start of the regular season. 

“After tryouts, we had three practices before our first game,” Rines said. “That’s a preseason game, but when you get to games, that’s one less day that you can practice. To me, that’s a big difference. I’d like to have what we had in the past where you’d have at least a week full of practice, seven days, before you have a game. Or at least space them out before the holiday break.”

Rines, who also coaches soccer at Buckfield during the fall, would like to see the two seasons moved up to allow for more practice time in preseason for both.

“I would like to see the fall season start earlier, so maybe one to two weeks earlier in the fall and one to two weeks earlier in the winter,” Rines said.

“I think they should give us a month of practice before we start playing games,” Graffam said. “When I was playing, we started November 1st, no matter what. They didn’t care if football was done or not.”

Not everyone had negative reviews for the busy schedule. Oxford Hills girls’ coach Nate Pelletier said it seems to suit his team just fine. His Vikings are 4-0.

“We’ve got a ton of games coming up. We’ve got to play Thursday, then Saturday, and Tuesday then Thursday,” Pelletier said early last week, before the inclement weather altered the schedule. “They pump all the games up early, I don’t know why, but, hey, we seem to play better when we just play games, so we’ll go for it.”

Inside job

Gray-New Gloucester senior center Skye Conley is adjusting to being the Patriots’ only true inside player this year.