Kudos to our fire departments for coming together on fires big and little over Labor Day weekend. Even the smaller emergencies take multiple hands, for the firefighters’ safety and everyone else’s.

Wherever each responder was, he or she left what they were doing and went to help in their town or someone else’s. At the start of the holiday weekend, they didn’t know they would end their sunny Saturday in their gear in Edgecomb or be out the door predawn on Sunday, for a Whitefield fire. But it was go-time, and they went.

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I’m a second generation Red Sox and Patriots fan, whose joy at the Sox breaking the curse was a little dimmed by it happening months after my father died; and who was mesmerized by the final moments of the last Super Bowl and remembers where she was when the U.S. beat Russia on the Olympic ice in 1980.

But unless the game is croquet or tenpins, few people in the Midcoast probably know less than I do about sports, and high school sports in particular. So here’s an outsider’s perspective.

What did Wiscasset Middle High do when it struggled to fill a baseball team last spring? It played JV. And when Boothbay Region’s incoming football team lacked the experience to safely play MVC last year, it, too, stayed in the game, with a winning season playing club.

This year’s MVC class changes, to D for Wiscasset and the new E class for Boothbay football, are nothing to lament. Enrollment may grow or not. Either way, as long as the schools keep playing, they will continue to graduate students who are better for having been part of a team or teams.

The D in Wiscasset’s new class represents determination to not throw in the MVC towel; and in Boothbay, E stands for excellence. The Seahawks are known for it.

A sports team isn’t defined by the class it plays in, but by the class it shows, win or lose. Shine, Wiscasset and Boothbay.