Gardiner Area High School's Hailey Chadbourne and Skowhegan Area High School's Kylie Damon were selected as finalists for the Miss Maine Field Hockey award, which will be handed out at the annual banquet on Sunday.

It was crazy that the game took three days to complete, but you'd have to say it was worth the wait. The finish of the Nokomis-Winslow Eastern B final showcased superb players and great field hockey.

Messalonskee field hockey coach Brenda Beckwith has been waiting for freshman Katie Bernatchez to a big impact on a game for the Eagles.

Bernatchez came through big time Saturday afternoon.

Even casual field hockey fans could have guessed before the season began the final four participants in this weekend's Eastern Maine Class A semifinal round. Skowhegan, Gardiner, Messalonskee and Cony, or "the group" as Bangor coach Lisa McPhee calls them, are there once again.

Junior Sabrina Vaillancourt has had a knack for scoring ever since she joined the varsity field hockey team at Nokomis. This season, Vaillancourt has 25 goals and is closing in on the school's career goal-scoring record.

The final field hockey Heal points are out, and some intriguing matchups are on tap.

The final Heal points for field hockey are scheduled to be released Thursday morning. Here's a few thoughts as we head into the playoffs:

Gardiner Area High School field hockey coach Moe McNally was honored for her 30 years of coaching following her team's 5-1 win over rival Cony on Tuesday in Gardiner.

Zara Saydjari, a former field hockey star at Skowhegan, is now a sophomore starting at the University of Michigan, which is ranked 19th in the nation in Division I. Michigan's record is just 3-5, but the Wolverines have played a schedule as brutal as any you'll ever see.

This week, I sat down with Moe McNally, the field hockey coach at Gardiner for the last 30 years. Moe's a great person to talk to about field hockey -- the senior all-star game is named after her -- but I also got a chance to talk to her about the changes in high school sports over the last 30 years.

It was good and bad to be Jordin McGinnis in the Nokomis-Winslow field hockey game Tuesday afternoon. The sophomore forward scored the game-winning goal, but sat out the last 10 minutes after taking her lumps from a ball and a stick.

Hailey Chadbourne is already considered one of the best field hockey players in the state. As a junior, she set the Gardiner field hockey record for points in a career and announced she would play at Division I Iowa.

In two games last week, Chadbourne has shown why people think so highly of her as a player.

Waterville knocked off Maranacook 3-0 on Wednesday in a rematch of last year's Class B state final. Waterville played all last season under the radar and peaked at the right time, but everyone is after the Purple Panthers this season.

Waterville grad Kristin Tormollan has already earned the starting job in her freshman year at Franklin Pierce University, and she's off to a strong start.

As promised, I'm offering a few predictions on the upcoming high school field hockey season. These are not by category, or in any particular order.

The high school season starts Friday, so I'll be doing a pair of blogs over the next two days. Tomorrow, I'll share my predictions on the upcoming season. Today, it's a look at some of the top games over the next week.

I was one of the few lucky enough to see the McNally Senior All-Star Field Hockey Game Saturday night. Some people will laugh and not be able to appreciate that. I know, because I used to be one of them.

Deciding when to postpone games is always a tough decision. There's always a chance that you'll look bad if you postpone and the weather gets better, or you don't postpone and the weather is awful.

That being said, the Maine Principals' Association certainly could have done a better job with regard to Saturday's state field hockey championships.

It didn't take long for the local field hockey teams to come up with a Plan B once the state championship games were postponed on Saturday. Skowhegan, the Eastern A champ, will host both Eastern B champion Waterville and Western B champ Maranacook in scrimmages this week.

As I write this on Thursday afternoon, weather.com is predicting a 70 percent chance of rain for Waterville on Saturday. But even if Saturday is a washout, these games will get played sometime, so here's a look at how the semifinals involving local teams shape up. Interestingly enough, four of the five matchups were one-goal games when the teams met in the regular season. The exception is the Maranacook-Wells game, as those two teams haven't met this fall.

This is still the first-round playoff preview, but there are a few games that needed to wait for the results of the prelims. Here they are:

A couple matchups are still to be determined because of preliminary round games, and we'll look at those on Tuesday. Right now, here's a look at the matchups we do know for certain involving local teams:

As always, this is the work of me (Matt, the guy in that photo).

The regular season winds down this week, and there are a couple important matchups on Tuesday, plus the KVAC games on Friday.

Here are a few extra items from some interesting games played on Thursday, including a milestone at Gardiner and two teams which almost got caught looking ahead to their next game.

As always, this field hockey list is solely the work of me (Matt, the guy in the outdated photo). It reflects games through Oct. 2.

Saturday's showdown between unbeaten Gardiner and six-time defending Class A champion Skowhegan should be a good one.

Monday's Hall-Dale/Winthrop field hockey game was such a good game in a great rivalry that I didn't have enough space to get everything in the story.

By Saturday, some field hockey teams will have finished their regular season, and will then have to wait a week and a half before their playoff games. That's another issue altogether, so before we get to that in the coming weeks, let's look at some of the best matchups in the area this week.

Maybe Thursday night's field hockey game between Belfast and Mt. View seemed so special because it was so rare. I'm not suggesting we over-saturate ourselves on night games, but this atmosphere could and should be re-created at other schools.

Note: This field hockey list is solely the work of me (Matt, the person in the photo). This will be a regular feature each Wednesday until the playoffs start in mid-October.

The field hockey picture became a little clearer this past week (for one thing, Edward Little was outscored 11-0 in its first two games after coming out as No. 1 in the Eastern A Heal points). This week starts off slow as far as intriguing matchups, but makes up for it near the end.

Here's a few extra tidbits from Thursday, including a fire at Mt. Blue and a Skowhegan player who is still on fire.

True, Skowhegan has outclassed its field hockey competition over the last four games, winning them by a combined score of 29-0. But whatever the context, the statistics for senior forward Sam Gifford are impressive.

The traditional Eastern A powers haven't started playing each other yet (aside from the Cony-Skowhegan Sept. 8) but there are still some interesting matchups this week. Here's a look at a few of them:

Maranacook has had to play the Eastern B/Western B game for the past few years. The Black Bears are consistently one of the top teams in the East, but run into a tough playoff draw in the West. This year, in their quest for a home playoff game, the Bears are getting more offensive.