Wait until next year.

It’s not a mantra that Cape Elizabeth football coach Aaron Filieo likes, but it’s one that might be particularly apropos after Saturday’s 28-19 loss to Mountain Valley in the West B title game in Rumford.

It’s the third straight season the Capers have come up short against the Falcons in the title game, but it was their best showing yet. They lost at home a year ago 10-0. Two years back, it was a 47-6 trouncing in Rumford that ended Cape’s season.

After graduating a load of players – including five all-Campbell Conference selections – from the 2007 team, the Capers were considered a distant No. 2 to Mountain Valley by most preseason prognosticators. A 34-6 loss to the Falcons in the regular-season finale two weeks ago (Cape’s only regular-season defeat) did little to change minds.

The Capers outplayed the Falcons for close to three quarters on Saturday, but only after spotting the hosts a 16-0 cushion. In the elements, that proved too much to overcome. That the Capers will return junior standout running back Tommy Foden, junior QB Ezra Wolfinger and junior speedster receiver Finn Melanson in 2009, graduating only six players, is only somewhat of a consolation for Filieo.

“We get a lot of our skill guys back,” he said. “We actually have a good portion of our offensive and defensive lines back. It’s easy to say that and it’s easy to say, ‘Next year, next year,’ but we really felt that we could knock these guys off this year. Nobody else felt that way. Nobody else in the state felt that way. But we always knew we were better than people said. Mountain Valley knew.”

The Falcons will graduate 15 seniors, including many of their top offensive weapons. Gone will be running back Justin Staires, fullback Matt Laubauskas and top receiver Travis Ruff.

“This is the fourth year in a row our seniors played in the Western Maine championship game,” said Falcons’ coach Jim Aylward.

That’s a lot of scoring and a ton of experience to have to replace. The Falcons will undoubtedly have some young players step in, but as Filieo can attest to, youth can be tough to overcome in big games, especially early on.

“I think our youth showed,” he said on Saturday, standing in the mud that two hours earlier had been the well-manicured grass of Hosmer Field. “But I’m just so proud of these guys.”

There were bumps in the road for Cape early in the season. It took some time for the younger players to adapt to new roles and adjust to one another. It wasn’t until the fifth game of the year (when they hooked up for five TD passes) that Foden said he and Wolfinger were on the same page on passing plays.

As the season progressed, things clicked. The six seniors – many who were not integral pieces in 2007 – stepped up and played important roles.

“These six seniors, besides Nathanael (Lavallee) and Matt Weiss, just came out of nowhere,” Filieo said. The other four seniors are Cam Smith, Conor Lawler, Nick Martin and Patrick Boland. “They really took this team – all six of them – and said yeah, (we lost) Jimmy Bump, Sean Meagher and all those guys, but we want to carry on the tradition. I think when the dust settles they’ll be able to look back and feel like they did continue the tradition and got us as close to beating Mountain Valley as we ever have been without actually beating them.”

The Capers continue to get closer and closer to dethroning Mountain Valley, but there remains that final step, that championship win. It came in 2004 for the Boston Red Sox, finally overcoming the New York Yankees to reach and win the World Series. It changed their mantra forever. They no longer expect the Yankees to always get the breaks, to always find a way to win.

“I’m waiting for our 2004,” Filieo said. “They had a couple of fumbles, they put the ball on the ground a couple times and we just didn’t get it. Those are things that once you crack that, once you beat them in a championship game, the rest will kind of take care of itself.”