John Challis, a Pennsylvania teenager whose battle with liver and lung cancer I blogged about in May, died Tuesday at his home in Freedom, Pa.

Here's a few words to take with you today, from John, who graduated from high school in June:

It's about 10 days until the start of fall sports practices here in Maine but in Texas - the heartland of high school football - high school teams are in their first day of contact drills after starting practices on Monday.

If you're like me and went between two televised NFL preseason games last night, you're probably ready for football season. Here's something to whet your appetite from ESPN, a (lengthy) story about high school football in Barrow, Alaska, just a few miles south of the North Pole. Try Google-mapping it sometime.

The Real Frozen Tundra.

Yarmouth's Matt Lane prepares to run the TD Banknorth Beach To Beacon on Saturday in Cape Elizabeth.

But if you turn the clock back about 12 1/2 years (or simply do a Google search), chances are you'll turn up a New York Times story on Lane, who competed in the 1995 Foot Locker High School Championship, the national scholastic cross country championship race in San Diego.

Lane, a Yarmouth High School graduate, finished fourth in San Diego. He ran professionally and is now a third-year law student at the Maine School of Law and a track and cross country coach at Yarmouth.