KENNEBUNK — There aren’t many teams who get to experience the exact feeling of what it’s like to lose, the gut punch of having what was a perfect season wrenched away in a matter of minutes, without actually having to go through the process of walking off the field a defeated squad.

Kennebunk, after using up all of its nine lives in last Friday’s improbable, and at times seemingly impossible, last minute comeback against Westbrook, is one such squad, and the look on the faces of the Rams’ afterwards said it all ”“ the joy of winning an emotionally draining heart-pounder, coupled with the relief of knowing they’d escaped from a game they had almost no chance of winning with a minute to play.

“No one on this team wants to feel that ever again,” senior captain Nicco DeLorenzo said. “Even though it was temporary and we did come out with the win, that was probably one of the worst feelings we’ve had all season. We’re all determined to not feel that again.”

Perhaps more than anyone else, DeLorenzo felt the weight lift off his shoulders when Jake Lary’s 18-yard field goal with 5.7 seconds left lifted the Rams to the 17-15 win and a berth in this Saturday’s regional final.

It was DeLorenzo’s fumble on a fourth and one ”“ which the Blue Blazes’ Kyle Heath picked up and returned 78 yards for a touchdown ”“ that had given Westbrook a shock 15-14 lead with 3:18 to play.

“It was a great relief,” said DeLorenzo, who leads the team in rushing yards (1,198) and touchdowns (19). “That’s what it’s like to have a great team behind you. Someone makes a mistake and they back you up.”

There were plenty of other chances when the Rams, who had dominated the second half of the game only to find themselves facing a fourth quarter deficit for the first time all season, could have thrown in the towel in the final minutes.

Their ensuing drive was ended when Heath intercepted Nick Emmons’ pass, with the mistake compounded by Jesse Shields’s 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after the play as things looked like unraveling.

“For a couple plays there, I thought we were done,” said Larson Coppinger, who still had his part to play.

With Westbrook one first down away victory, the Kennebunk defense, which allowed just 29 yards of offense in the second half, stood up one last time.

And, like any good Hollywood script would surely say, it was Shields making up for his penalty with a tackle behind the line of scrimmage on fourth-and-one to get the Rams the ball back.

“It was sort of one of those things you don’t really think about until after,” said Ben Bath, another senior captain and two-way starter who Emmons credited after as keeping the Rams emotionally in the game.

“We were still just in the moment of the game, still just playing. We realized that’s what we had to do; there’s no sense in giving up on the game when we’re still in it.”

Still, with 68 seconds left on the clock, no timeouts, 77 yards to go and an offense that had completed just two passes for 10 yards all night, Kennebunk’s chances remained faint, and they got even slimmer when Emmons’ first three passes fell incomplete.

But down to their last roll of the dice, Emmons came up huge, lofting a perfectly placed pass into the hands of a streaking Coppinger to move the ball to the Westbrook 25.

After all that, there was still work left to do to move Lary into better position. And yet again, the Rams rose to the challenge, moving the ball all the way down to the one for a chip-shot field goal and a victory that head coach Joe Rafferty is “still digesting.”

“That (win) says a lot about how we are as a group,” said Bath. “Our group plays so well together and we have a special bond after playing together for so long; anything’s possible with this group, and we knew that was possible.”

It was an unlikely victory in what has been a season of rejuvenation for a Kennebunk program that previously had just one winning season in the past decade and hadn’t won a playoff game since 2001.

But a reclassification down to Class B, coupled with a talented senior class, has the Rams just one win away from their first state title game appearance since 1999.

“Two years ago this wasn’t exactly where I thought I’d be senior year,” DeLorenzo said. “I’m glad it is where we are, and we all realize the importance and we all realize what’s at stake. We have a great chance here and it doesn’t come around often, so we have to make it happen.”

Making it happen, he said, means playing a much better game this Saturday against Marshwood.

“We feel like we can only go up,” DeLorenzo said. “We didn’t play a great game on Friday, and we feel like we’ve got something to prove. We’ve got that chip on our shoulder again, so we’re going to come ready on Saturday.”

— Staff Writer Cameron Dunbar can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 323.