Woodstock opened its football season on the road Saturday and came up short at Newport, N.H., 30-16.

The Wasps (0-1) visited the Tigers (1-0) for a 2 p.m. kickoff and finished on the wrong side of a 14-point gap in their first game of the year. It was a tough opening test across the river before Woodstock settles into a Division III slate at home and around Vermont.

Woodstock football is back in action Friday, Sept. 11, against North Country Union.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON SATURDAY

Missisquoi Valley (0-1) 0 at Windsor (1-0) 54

Windsor opened Division III with a home shutout.

Otter Valley (1-0) 26 at Mill River (0-1) 14

The Otters took a road win in Division III.

That wraps up the day for Woodstock High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

Hartford football opened the season on the road and came up short. Champlain Valley Union took a 24-13 win in Hinesburg on Saturday afternoon, leaving the Hurricanes 0-1 and CVU 1-0. It was Hartford’s first varsity game of 2026, a tough opener against a Redhawks side that controlled the day.

Hartford vs U-32 | September 5, 2026

The Hurricanes answered on the soccer pitch. Hartford blanked U-32 3-0 at home, improving to 2-1 after Tuesday’s 4-1 win at Montpelier and an opening 2-3 loss at North Country Union. U-32 falls to 0-3. A clean shutout kept the home streak rolling after that Montpelier response.

Hartford at St. Johnsbury Academy | September 5, 2026

Field hockey got the first win of the year on the road. Hartford edged St. Johnsbury Academy 2-1, moving to 1-2 after early losses to CVU and U-32. St. Johnsbury sits 0-3.

That wraps up the day for Hartford High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

Lebanon boys soccer needed a response after Tuesday’s 2-1 home loss to Hanover, and they got one on the road. The Raiders blanked Pembroke 1-0 in a Division II match Friday afternoon, moving to 1-1. Pembroke sits 1-1. Period scores were not fully posted; the final stands Lebanon 1, Pembroke 0.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON FRIDAY

Manchester West (1-2) 0 at ConVal (2-0-1) 4

ConVal stayed perfect in Division II with a home shutout.

Oyster River (1-0-1) 2 at Bow (1-0-1) 2

Road draw; both sit 1-0-1.

Milford (1-0-1) 2 at Stark (0-1-1) 2

Milford and Stark shared the points.

Souhegan (0-2) 1 at Hollis-Brookline (1-0) 2

Hollis-Brookline opened with a one-goal home win.

Lebanon vs Pembroke | September 4, 2026

The girls’ side of the Pembroke doubleheader went the other way. Pembroke took a 3-2 win at Lebanon, leaving the Raiders 1-1 after an opening 3-0 win at Thetford Academy. Pembroke is 2-0. Period scores were not posted.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON FRIDAY

Bow (2-0) 3 at Oyster River (0-3) 0

Bow shut out Oyster River on the road in Division II.

Merrimack Valley (5-1) 3 at Plymouth (2-1-1) 2

Merrimack Valley edged Plymouth by one.

Milford (2-0) 4 at John Stark (1-1-1) 2

Milford won at Stark.

Lebanon vs Epping/Newmarket | September 4, 2026

Football opened Division III with a home loss. Epping/Newmarket rolled 34-14 at Lebanon, dropping the Raiders to 0-1. Epping/Newmarket is 1-0. Quarters were not posted.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON FRIDAY

Monadnock (1-0) 18 at Kearsarge (0-1) 14

Monadnock edged Kearsarge on the road in Division III.

Gilford (1-0) 28 at Stevens (0-1) 7

Gilford rolled at Stevens.

Laconia (0-1) 6 at Somersworth (1-0) 12

Somersworth won a one-score home opener.

Woodstock field hockey is still undefeated. The Wasps needed overtime Friday to finish Rutland 1-0 at home, improving to 3-0 after Tuesday’s 3-2 win over Windsor. Rutland falls to 0-3. The game was scoreless through regulation before Woodstock found the winner in OT.

Woodstock at Windsor | September 4, 2026

Girls soccer grabbed a road shutout the same afternoon. Woodstock beat Windsor 1-0, moving to 1-2. Windsor sits 2-1. Period scores were not posted.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON FRIDAY

Fair Haven (0-3) 1 at Otter Valley (2-0) 3

Otter Valley won at home; Fair Haven still winless.

Woodstock vs Brattleboro | September 4, 2026

Boys soccer took the short end at home. Brattleboro won 3-1, leaving Woodstock 1-1 after an opening 1-0 win at Mount Anthony. Brattleboro is 3-0. Period scores were not posted.

That wraps up the day for Woodstock High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

Hartford volleyball kept rolling at home. The Hurricanes swept Mount Anthony 3-0 on Friday (25-12, 25-18, 25-18), improving to 2-0 after Wednesday’s 3-0 win at Randolph. Mount Anthony sits 1-1. It was a clean three-set night with no drama in the set scores.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON FRIDAY

Champlain Valley Union (2-0) 3 @ Middlebury (3-1) 2

CVU took a five-set road win; first loss for Middlebury.

St. Johnsbury Academy (1-1) 0 @ Enosburg Falls (4-0) 3

Enosburg swept at home and stayed undefeated.

Montpelier (1-1) 2 @ Burlington (2-1) 3

Burlington outlasted Montpelier in five sets.

Hartford vs Mount Anthony | September 4, 2026

The same visitor flipped the script earlier. Mount Anthony took a 2-1 win at Hartford, leaving the Hurricanes 1-1 after Tuesday’s 1-0 win over Fair Haven. Mount Anthony is 1-1. Halves: Mount Anthony 1-1, Hartford 0-1.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON FRIDAY

Fair Haven (0-3) 1 @ Otter Valley (2-0) 3

Otter Valley won at home; Fair Haven still winless.

Woodstock (1-2) 1 @ Windsor (2-1) 0

Woodstock won 1-0 on the road.

That wraps up the day for Hartford High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

Hanover football opened at home Friday night and came up short. Plymouth walked into Merriman-Branch Field and left with an 18-11 win, dropping the Bears to 0-1. Plymouth sits 1-0. Quarters were not posted; the final stands Plymouth 18, Hanover 11.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON FRIDAY

Kennett (0-1) 6 @ Manchester West (1-0) 9 (OT)

Manchester West won it in overtime.

Merrimack Valley (1-0) 50 @ Hollis-Brookline (0-1) 21

Merrimack Valley opened with a decisive road win.

Souhegan (1-0) 41 @ Bow (0-1) 7

Souhegan rolled in its opener on the road.

Pelham (1-0) 21 @ Kingswood (0-1) 0

Pelham blanked Kingswood in Wolfeboro.

St. Thomas Aquinas (0-1) 31 @ ConVal (1-0) 33

ConVal edged St. Thomas in a two-point thriller.

Hanover at Stark | September 4, 2026

Volleyball kept the win streak rolling on the road. Hanover swept Stark 3-0 in Division II, improving to 2-0 after Wednesday’s 3-2 home win over Coe-Brown. Stark falls to 0-1. Set points were not posted.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON FRIDAY

Souhegan (2-1) 3 @ Fall Mountain (0-1) 0

Souhegan took a clean road sweep in Division II.

Kennett (0-1) 0 @ Coe-Brown Academy (1-1) 3

Coe-Brown answered at home after Wednesday’s five-set loss at Hanover.

Plymouth (0-2) 1 @ Manchester West (1-0) 3

Manchester West opened with a home win; Plymouth is 0-2.

Laconia (0-2) 0 @ Kingswood (1-0) 3

Kingswood swept Laconia.

That wraps up the day for Hanover High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

Plymouth arrives as one of the division’s traditional powers, a team most observers expect to contend for a title. Hanover arrives off a 5-4 season and a playoff appearance, returning eight starters on offense and eight on defense while replacing a significant graduating class. The distance between those two descriptions is exactly what Week 1 exists to measure.

Jon Gentine’s Bears have a deep senior class and an offensive line that has grown up together. Whether that’s enough this early is the question. Plymouth is not a team that lets you find out slowly.

Plymouth’s formula hasn’t changed

Gentine named Plymouth himself as one of the perennial programs Division II teams circle in August. The reason is consistency. Plymouth’s identity has been the same for years: physical offensive line play, a committed running game, disciplined defense, and special teams that don’t give anything away.

None of that is complicated, which is what makes it difficult to beat. If Plymouth is allowed to dictate pace and field position, the game follows a familiar script. Hanover’s best chance is to break that script early, before it becomes one.

The game turns up front

Start with Hanover’s offensive line, because everything else the Bears want to do depends on it.

Junior Blake Colla has grown into a 6-foot-3, 285-pound left tackle. Senior Dre Whyte anchors the right side at similar size. Senior Will Freitag at left guard and sophomore Jackson Argenti at right guard mean Hanover gives up nothing in the interior. Camp reports suggest the group is not only bigger than last year’s, but more athletic.

That matters for a specific reason. Hanover’s offense works when it stays on schedule — controlling first down, keeping quarterback EJ Frechette out of third and long situations, and running the ball well enough to make play-action a real threat. Four-plus yards on first down is the number to watch. Hit it, and the Bears have a workable path. Miss it, and Plymouth’s front seven gets to play the way it prefers.

Senior center and captain Hudson Wilmot is the quiet key. Returning centers rarely draw attention, but against a veteran defense the pre-snap work matters as much as the block. Identifying fronts, diagnosing pressure, getting four other linemen pointed the right way — Wilmot doing that at speed may be the most important thing on the field that nobody in the stands notices.

Frechette doesn’t need a big night

Senior captain EJ Frechette is Hanover’s most important player, and his job Friday is smaller than it sounds.

He returns with real varsity experience and a better handle on coverages, pressure, and game management than he had a year ago. Plymouth’s defense will almost certainly work to take away explosive plays and force Hanover to string together long drives instead. That’s a test of patience more than arm talent.

Three hundred passing yards would not tell you much. A clean, turnover-free night would tell you a great deal.

Franklin has to earn it

Senior captain Caleb Franklin is Hanover’s most versatile player, contributing at receiver and defensive back. Getting him the ball in space — quick screens, slants, designed touches, the occasional play-action shot — is the most direct route to the explosive plays the Bears need.

The complication is that Plymouth tackles well and rarely gives away free yards. Hanover won’t get its chunk plays from busted coverage. It will have to scheme them, block them, and finish them.

Making Plymouth earn every first down

The defensive assignment is simpler to state than to execute.

Wilmot returns at linebacker, joined by Jack Richardson at outside linebacker, with Peak Temple back in the secondary. That’s a leadership core with snaps under its belt, and it will need every one of them.

The goal is possessions. If Plymouth grinds out five and six yards a carry, the Bears simply won’t see the ball enough to matter, regardless of what the offense is capable of. Hanover doesn’t have to stop the run cold. It has to make Plymouth take twelve plays to do what it would rather do in six.

X-factor: Petrov and the field-position battle

Gentine singled out kicker Dima Petrov as one of the hardest-working players in the program. Petrov comes in as the #2 ranked kicker in the country with a full-ride offer from Iowa.

Week 1 games turn on field position, missed tackles, and special teams mistakes far more often than on scheme. A kicker who consistently flips field position and converts what’s in front of him is worth more in a game like this than in most, and it’s one of the few areas where Hanover can win an exchange outright.

Prediction

Plymouth deserves the favorite’s label. Program history says so, and so does the roster.

But Hanover may be more dangerous than a 5-4 record suggests. The Bears return a veteran quarterback, several two-way impact players, real experience across both lines, and what could be the biggest offensive line the program has fielded in years. If they control the line of scrimmage and protect the football, this stays closer than the spread suggests.

Plymouth 28, Hanover 20.

The most telling number Friday night may not be on the scoreboard. It may be whether Hanover’s fronts, on both sides of the ball, look like they belong physically with one of Division II’s traditional powers. If they do, the rest of the schedule gets a lot more interesting.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON THURSDAY

Souhegan (2-0-1) 1 @ Merrimack Valley (0-3-1) 0

Souhegan snuck a one-goal road win in D-II.

Milford (2-1) 1 @ ConVal (0-2) 0

Milford took a one-goal decision at ConVal.

That wraps up the day for Lebanon High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

Hanover boys soccer keeps stacking Division I wins. Coming off a 3-0 home win over Nashua North on Tuesday, the Bears hosted Salem on Thursday and walked off 6-1, improving to 4-0 overall and 3-0 in league. Hanover sits alone atop the early Division I board. Period scores were not posted; the final stands Hanover 6, Salem 1.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON THURSDAY

Exeter (1-1) 2 @ Bedford (4-0) 5

Bedford stayed perfect with a home Division I win.

Concord (1-2) 1 @ Pinkerton (2-2) 2

Pinkerton edged Concord.

Nashua South (3-0) 7 @ Windham (0-3) 1

South rolled on the road; Windham dropped to 0-3.

Spaulding (0-3) 2 @ Keene (1-1) 11

Keene poured it on at home.

Merrimack (2-1) 1 @ Londonderry (1-1) 2

Londonderry took a one-goal win.

Winnacunnet (1-2) 3 @ Manchester Central (1-3) 2

Winnacunnet stole one on the road.

Portsmouth (1-1-1) 0 @ Goffstown (1-0-1) 0

Scoreless draw in Division I.

Manchester Memorial (2-0-1) 2 @ Dover (0-1-1) 2

Memorial and Dover shared the points.

Hanover at Salem | September 3, 2026

The Hanover girls answered a non-league road trip the same afternoon, blanking Salem 4-0 to move to 2-1. They opened with a 0-1 loss at Windham, then beat Nashua North 4-0 before Thursday’s shutout. League play has not started (0-0).

Hanover at Bow | September 3, 2026

Field hockey’s only blemish this week came in a non-league dogfight at Bow. The Bears fell 5-4 after opening the year 2-0 in Division II (4-0 over Hollis-Brookline, 8-0 over Lebanon). Overall they sit 2-1.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON THURSDAY

Lebanon (1-2) 1 @ Hollis-Brookline (1-2) 2

Hollis-Brookline edged Lebanon in Division II. Both sit under .500; Lebanon had already taken the 8-0 loss at Hanover earlier in the week.

Souhegan (2-0-1) 1 @ Merrimack Valley (0-3-1) 0

Souhegan snuck a one-goal road win in D-II.

Milford (2-1) 1 @ ConVal (0-2) 0

Milford took a one-goal decision at ConVal.

that wraps up the day for Hanover High School sports. We'll see you next time!

HANOVER, N.H. — The commute begins at 7:42 a.m.

He emerges from the home office, a room that is legally a law practice and functionally a place where a man can keep a printer and avoid people. From there it is roughly the length of a hallway to the front door. Ryan Gardner covers that distance in a little under four minutes. There is no hurry in it. There is no urgency. There is only the slow, deliberate, gyroscopic transfer of weight from one hip to the other that his colleagues have described, generously, as walking, and that his wife has described, accurately, as waddling.

“He calls it a commute,” says Helena Gardner, who has been married to him long enough to have developed a completely flat delivery. “It’s twenty feet. He’s passed the coffee maker twice.”

Ryan Gardner is in his forties. It is worth establishing this early, because almost nothing else in this article will confirm it.

THE REGIMEN

Under the desk in the home office, there is a Rygeo Pedal Exerciser.

It is a small plastic device with two pedals, a tension knob, and a tiny display reporting numbers that no independent party has ever verified. It costs about forty dollars. It is, as best anyone can determine, the entirety of Ryan Gardner’s athletic infrastructure.

He pedals during client calls. He pedals while reviewing film. He pedals while composing emails to the athletic director that he does not send. On a good day he will announce to the room that he “got a solid twenty in,” declining to specify twenty of what.

The tension knob goes from one to eight.

“It has never been above two,” Helena says. “I’ve checked. Many times.”

THE CREDENTIAL

Ryan Gardner went to Princeton.

You will not learn this from Ryan Gardner. It arrives sideways, from somebody else, in a parking lot, years into knowing him, and your first reaction is that you have misheard.

Hanover is not a town short on credentials. This is a place where you cannot back out of a parking space without endangering a published academic. There are more advanced degrees per square mile here than almost anywhere in New England — and the smartest man in the zip code has not been photographed in a collared shirt since the Bush administration.

Not a dress shirt. Not a polo. Not a tie, obviously; the tie is a bridge several towns too far. He practices law in a quarter-zip. He has taken positions of real consequence while wearing a fleece that has been washed so many times it has changed genus. When an occasion demands better — an occasion he cannot get out of — something gets worked out, quietly, at the last minute, and nobody discusses it afterward.

The mind is legitimately frightening. He will take an argument apart in about nine seconds while wearing gym shorts in forty degree weather. He remembers everything. He reads constantly. He can hold four unrelated things in his head and locate the one place where they touch.

And he will deploy every bit of that horsepower, the entire Princeton apparatus, to explain to a nineteen-year-old official why that was, by rule, a legal push from behind.

THE POSITION

The arc of Ryan Gardner’s coaching career is best understood as a man trying to quit smoking.

He started as an assistant. He was good at it. He was good enough at it that eventually they handed him the whole thing, and for a handful of years Ryan Gardner was the head coach of Hanover High School boys varsity lacrosse. The chair. The clipboard. The postgame remarks. The 11:40 p.m. emails from a father named Doug.

Then he quit.

Nobody pushed him, and this should be said plainly, because the other version of the story is funnier and completely untrue. He walked away on his own terms. He cited bandwidth and the practice and time with the family, and everyone nodded, because those are real reasons and he had real versions of all three.

He lasted about as long as you would expect.

Because here is the thing no amount of bandwidth can fix: Ryan Gardner loves coaching. Not likes. Not “enjoys giving back.” Loves it, in the specific and faintly alarming way a person loves a thing they cannot be talked out of. He came back as an assistant, an arrangement he now describes as the best years of his coaching life, and here he is telling the truth. He gets every opinion he had as head coach and none of the paperwork. He is a former head of state who still turns up to the briefings. He does not answer to Doug. He simply stands eleven feet from the decision-making and reacts to it, visibly, at volume, for two hours.

THE BUS

The team travels by bus. Ryan does not.

The bus is a functional yellow vehicle with seats, windows, and a driver named Dale who has never once complained. Ryan refers to it exclusively as “the short bus,” a nickname he finds hilarious and has found hilarious continuously since approximately 2001, and which no one else has ever laughed at, including in 2001.

He follows the team in his own car at a respectful distance, like a Secret Service detail nobody requested. He arrives four minutes after everyone else. He parks close. He gets out holding a coffee he did not need and cannot finish, and he walks toward the field with the bearing of a man who has just landed in a helicopter.

“He says it’s about back support,” Helena says. “It’s about the radio.”

THE OFFICIATING

Coaches yell. Every coach yells. Yelling at officials is a well-established part of the sport and, in some counties, a form of local theater.

Ryan does not yell. Ryan conducts.

It begins in the first quarter as commentary, delivered at conversational volume to no one in particular, on the general decline of American officiating. By halftime it has become a personal correspondence between him and one specific man in stripes. By the fourth quarter he is out on the white line with both arms open, palms up, explaining the rulebook to a 72 year-old getting paid sixty-five dollars to be there.

And then there is a hand on his elbow.

Helena has, over the years, developed a technique. She does not scold. She does not argue. She simply appears, takes the arm, and applies steady lateral pressure, the way you would guide a shopping cart with a bad wheel. Witnesses describe it as almost tender. It works every time. He is still talking as he goes, but he goes.

She has extracted him from an estimated forty games. She has never once had to say anything.

THE RITUAL

After a bad practice — and there is always a bad practice — it becomes Miller Time.

He says this out loud. He says it as though the phrase is his, as though he has just now arrived at it, and he has been saying it since before some of his players were born.

Let it be stated plainly, for the record, without hedging: the man loves Miller Lite. Not tolerates. Not defaults to. Loves. He has been offered other beers. Good beers. Expensive beers. Beers brewed eleven miles from his house by a man with a beard and a philosophy. He declines them the way a happily married man declines a phone number. He will hold forth on the failures of the modern IPA for six unbroken minutes, unprompted, holding a Miller Lite, and at no point in those six minutes will he detect any tension in this.

Press him and he will go to the mat. Great taste. Less filling. He is aware that this was an advertising campaign. He is aware that it ran before he was born. He considers the matter settled and the argument won.

The ceremony has a location, and the location is Ramunto’s. Small. Loud enough. Pizza on one side, beer on the other, no pretense anywhere in the building. Ryan does not go to Ramunto’s so much as return to it. There is a seat. It is understood to be his seat — not by any formal arrangement, but by the same unwritten municipal logic that governs pews and barber chairs — and on the rare evening somebody else is in it, the entire room can feel the disturbance.

He arrives in the practice clothes. He does not go home and change first, because changing first would imply the day is over, and the day is not over until the debrief is done. The debrief happens here, at length, delivered to whoever is present, regardless of whether that person coaches, played, or has ever in their life seen a lacrosse game.

Then he sits. There is a long exhale that sounds like a tire deflating in a distant town. The first pull is taken with the eyes closed, and it converts whatever happened out on that field into something a man can live with.

He has been known to observe Miller Time after good practices too. For balance.

He brings his own to cookouts, to team dinners, to other people’s homes. Not because he thinks the host won’t have beer. Because he knows the host won’t have this.

THE SIGHTINGS

Ryan Gardner is everywhere.

This is not a figure of speech so much as a logistics problem. There is a growing body of evidence that he is either in two places at once or has quietly eliminated sleep as a category.

Tuesday evening — location undisclosed. Choir practice. There is no choir. There is no singing. It is a standing engagement with a group of men, most of them comfortably north of seventy, who drink together and have for years and who call it choir practice because that is funnier and because at some point one of them needed to tell a wife something. Ryan is the youngest man in the room by roughly thirty years. He does not find this concerning. He finds it an honor. He has never missed one.

Thursday, 6:15 p.m. — Norwich. The racket club. Ryan is there. He is playing, or he is watching, or he is standing near a court holding a Miller Lite that he has been permitted to bring in, an exemption that has never been fully explained and that no other member appears to enjoy. Asked about the arrangement, he says only that he “worked it out with them.”

Saturday morning — Lebanon. A sporting event. The sport is not the point; the sport rotates. Middle school basketball, a wrestling meet, a JV game between two programs with no bearing on anything. Ryan is in the third row. He has no kid on either team. He has no kid at either school. He has, as far as anyone has been able to establish, no reason to be in the building at all. He knows the score, the substitution pattern, and which kid has been playing on a bad ankle since the second week of the season.

And when nobody can find him anywhere, which does happen, he is at home at the desk with four or five windows open, watching Division II and Division III lacrosse streams of a quality best described as available.

These are not good broadcasts. These are games shot from one fixed camera bolted somewhere near the concession stand, with wind noise, no commentary, and a score graphic that quit updating in the second quarter. Nobody watches these games. That is nearly literal — the viewer count is displayed, it is a two-digit number, and one of those digits is Ryan.

He knows the players’ names. Not the standouts. The names. He will tell you that the long pole for a school you have never heard of is a sophomore who is going to be a problem next spring, and he will turn out to be right, and there will be no practical way to confirm this, and nobody will ask.

Helena, asked to account for her husband’s whereabouts on a given evening, tends to answer in ranges.

“He’s at one of the five places,” she says. “It’s always one of the five places.”

THE TALENT PROBLEM

Here is the thing that keeps him up at night.

Hanover is not a poor town. Hanover has money. Hanover has parents who own three kinds of ski equipment and can name a nutritionist. Hanover has facilities, lights, turf, boosters, and a booster club newsletter with a header graphic. And yet, year after year, Hanover cannot field a team that scares anybody.

Ryan cannot understand it. He has thoughts. He shares them. He shares them in the parking lot, at the diner, in the group chat, and once, memorably, during a moment of silence.

What he does not do is connect any of this to the fact that his own kid — a kid who by every account can actually play, a kid who would be starting for this program right now — attends a prep school with a crest, a Latin motto, and a rowing team.

Asked about this, Ryan will explain that it was about academics.

Asked a follow-up, Ryan will notice something very interesting happening at the other end of the field.

THE GAME

His senior year, he played in the championship. He will tell you about it. You do not have to ask; asking is not part of the mechanism. The mechanism is simply time.

That was a quarter of a century ago. The account has not gotten any shorter.

He was a redhead then. Not strawberry. Not sandy. A full, unapologetic, structurally impressive red, the kind of hair that photographs badly and ages beautifully in the retelling. In the story it catches the light. In the story it is always the fourth quarter. In the story the crowd grows a little every year, which is remarkable, because the game was played in May in New Hampshire — a distinction without a difference — in front of maybe two hundred people, half of whom were sitting in the car with the engine running for the heat.

The hair is gone. He knows the hair is gone. He has made his peace with the hair being gone the way men do, which is to say not at all, silently, forever.

The game is not gone. The game is the whole reason. Every spring he stands on that sideline hoping some seventeen-year-old is about to get a version of the thing he got — one cold afternoon that lodges in a person for twenty-five years and refuses to be talked out of them.

THE VERDICT

Here is the unfortunate part, the part that ruins an otherwise perfect roast: he’s good at it, and he loves it, and those turn out to be the same fact.

Ten-plus years. Head coach, then not, then back again because he could not help himself. Unpaid or close enough to it. Cold May afternoons, rain, kids who don’t listen and parents who sometimes do — and he keeps showing up, waddling out of a home office to go stand in the wind and care enormously about a game that stopped owing him anything twenty-five years ago.

Nobody does that by accident. Nobody does that on the way to something better. He quit once and it didn’t take, and the sad, disqualifying, deeply unfunny truth is that Hanover is lucky to have him.

Somewhere in the Upper Valley tonight, it’s Miller Time.

The man earned it.

The author would like to note that he has ridden the bus. Repeatedly. It’s fine.

Hanover girls volleyball needed all five sets Wednesday night, but the Bears got the opener they wanted at home, beating Coe-Brown Academy 3-2 in their NHIAA Division II debut. It was the first varsity match of the year for both sides, and Hanover walked out 1-0 after a grind that went the distance. Set-by-set points were not posted; the final stands Hanover 3, Coe-Brown 2.

OTHER RELEVANT PLAY ON WEDNESDAY

Plymouth (0-1) 0 @ Oyster River (1-0) 3

Straight-set league win. Oyster River is 1-0 in Division II, same as Hanover.

That wraps up the day for Hanover High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

Hartford boys soccer needed a response after opening the year with a loss, and Tuesday night in Montpelier the Hurricanes got one. Colin Morlock, Owen McMahon, and Liam Applebee were on the scoresheet in a 4-1 win over the Solons.

It was a non-league game at Montpelier High School. Hartford is 1-1 overall after the win and still 0-0 in SVL-B play.

SVL-B boys soccer rankings are not yet out.

• Woodstock 0-0 (1-0)

• Fair Haven 0-0 (1-0)

• Stratton Mountain 0-0

• Hartford 0-0 (1-1)

Hartford vs Fair Haven | September 1, 2026

Hartford girls soccer opened league play at Maxfield Sports Complex and beat Fair Haven 1-0. The Hurricanes scored in the first half and held it. They are 1-0 overall and 1-0 in SVL-B.

SVL-B girls soccer rankings are not yet out.

• Otter Valley 1-0

• Hartford 1-0

• Woodstock 0-1 (1-1)

• Stratton Mountain 0-0

• Fair Haven 0-1 (0-2)

Hartford at U-32 | September 1, 2026

Hartford field hockey went to U-32 and came home on the wrong end of a 5-0 result. The Hurricanes are 0-2 overall and still 0-0 in SVL-A after a second straight non-league loss.

SVL-A field hockey rankings are not yet out.

• Bellows Falls Union 1-0

• Burr & Burton 0-1 (1-1)

• Brattleboro 0-0

• Rutland 0-0 (0-1)

• Hartford 0-0 (0-2)

That wraps up the day for Hartford High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

Woodstock beat Windsor 3-2 at home Tuesday in a league field hockey game. The Wasps are 2-0, 1-0 SVL-B. Windsor is 0-1.

• Fair Haven 0-0 (2-0 overall)

• Otter Valley 0-0 (1-0 overall)

• Windsor 0-1

• Woodstock 1-0 (2-0 overall)

That wraps up the day for Woodstock Union High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

NHIAA field hockey rankings are not yet out.

• Hanover 2-0

• Lebanon 1-1

• Plymouth 2-0

• Exeter 2-0 (1-0 league)

• Mascenic Regional 2-0

• Newfound Regional 1-0

• Stevens 0-1

That wraps up the day for Lebanon High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

Hanover field hockey put up eight unanswered goals Tuesday night and rolled past Lebanon, 8-0, at home. The Bears moved to 2-0 on the young season in a neighbor matchup that never got close after the opening push. The final stands as Hanover 8, Lebanon 0.

NHIAA field hockey rankings are not yet out.

• Hanover 2-0

• Lebanon 1-1

• Plymouth 2-0

• Exeter 2-0 (1-0 league)

• Mascenic Regional 2-0

• Newfound Regional 1-0

• Stevens 0-1

Hanover vs Nashua North | September 1, 2026

Earlier Tuesday, Hanover boys soccer blanked Nashua North, 3-0, at home. The Bears are 3-0 overall after the win.

Division I rankings are not yet out.

• Alvirne 0-2

• Bedford 2-0 (3-0 overall)

• Bishop Guertin 0-1

• Concord 1-1

• Dover 0-1

• Exeter 1-0

• Goffstown 1-0

• Hanover 2-0 (3-0 overall)

• Keene 0-1

• Londonderry 0-1

• Manchester Central 1-1 (1-2 overall)

• Manchester Memorial 2-0

• Merrimack 1-0 (2-0 overall)

• Nashua North 1-2 (1-2-1 overall)

• Nashua South 3-0 (4-0 overall)

• Pinkerton 1-3

• Portsmouth 1-1

• Salem 2-0 (3-0 overall)

• Spaulding 0-2

• Timberlane 1-0 (1-2 overall)

• Windham 0-2

• Winnacunnet 0-2

That wraps up the day for Hanover High School sports. We’ll see you next time!

Hanover shut out Nashua North 4-0 on the road Monday at Stellos Stadium in Nashua. Non-league. It is Hanover’s first win of the season. The Bears are 1-1. Nashua North is 0-2.

Division I rankings are not yet out.

• Alvirne 1-0

• Bedford 1-0

• Bishop Guertin 0-1

• Concord 0-1

• Dover 0-0-1

• Exeter 1-0

• Goffstown 0-0

• Hanover 1-1

• Keene 0-1

• Londonderry 0-0

• Manchester Central 0-0

• Manchester Memorial 0-0

• Merrimack 0-0-1

• Nashua North 0-2

• Nashua South 0-0-1

• Pinkerton 1-0

• Portsmouth 0-0-1

• Salem 0-0

• Spaulding 0-0

• Timberlane 1-0

• Windham 1-0

• Winnacunnet 0-1

Monday, August 31 | Hanover at Concord Country Club

The Bears were at Concord Country Club on Monday for a four-school meet and shot 194 on the par-34 front nine. That was one stroke behind Dover, even with Concord, and 49 clear of Manchester Central. One meet, three pairings: Hanover lost 194-193 to Dover, tied Concord 194-194, and beat Manchester Central 194-243. Hanover is 1-1-1.

Division I rankings are not yet out.

• Bedford 5-1

• Concord 3-2-1

• Dover 3-0

• Exeter 3-3

• Goffstown 0-3

• Hanover 1-1-1

• Londonderry 2-1

• Manchester Central 1-5

• Manchester Memorial 0-3

• Merrimack 2-1

• Pinkerton 1-2

• Portsmouth 3-0

• Salem 3-0

• Winnacunnet 1-2

that wraps up the day for Hanover High School sports. We’ll see you next time!