The state championship game isn’t an unfamiliar place for neither the Richmond Bobcats or the Bangor Christian Patriots boys soccer teams as the Bobcats have now made a push for a Gold Ball in eight of the last 10 years, while the Patriots entered their sixth straight championship, winning the last five including three against Richmond.

The Bobcats (18-0) were out for revenge as they were winless at 0-4 against the Patriots (16-2) in title games. They finally got what they wanted, a 3-0 shut-out victory at Hampden Academy on Saturday.

“It feels great,” Bobcats senior forward Marcus Blake said about the first state championship victory over the Patriots. “Even my brother lost to these guys when he played, so to finally get the Gold Ball in my family, for the people who played and just for the school, it’s awesome.”

“Most importantly they just played the way they played all year,” Bobcats coach Peter Gardner said about his team’s performance. “We started the season saying we’d build from the back forward and we continued to do that. That’s pretty much what our whole thing has been this year, to play a lot of good, solid defense and get your offense from your defense, and that’s kind of what happened today.”

Blake on fire

The action got started almost immediately and it came from the side of the Bobcats just 2:57 into the game when Blake received a pass from Curtis Anderson and cut around a defender and drove a shot from eightyards out and past the dive of Patriots goalie Dennis Farnham.

Over the course of the next 13 minutes the Patriots were only able to manage one shot on net, while the Bobcats had another opportunity with 24:30 remaining when Blake sent a ball into space to Cody Tribbet, who followed through on a shot that was stopped by a diving Farnham to keep the score at 1-0.

However, Blake wasn’t finished on the offensive front. With 19:10 on the clock the senior launched a shot from 40-yards out. At first it appeared that the ball was going to either hit the crossbar or go out-of-play, but a last second break in the ball’s path found its way between Farnham’s hand and the crossbar and into the back of the net to make it 2-0.

“He’s an awfully tough competitor,” Gardner said of Blake. “He does some nice things and his thought process is excellent in terms of soccer, soccer decisions. That second goal was a brilliant goal. If you watched what he did, he took a step back and took on a defensive posture and came through when he saw it needed to come through.”

“At Western Maines I wasn’t feeling good,” Blake said of his health going into the game. “This morning and last night I made sure to take care of myself, get plenty of rest and hydrate and come out with as much energy as I possibly could.”

Heading into the second half the Bobcats had controlled a majority of the game, but with the wind now in the Patriots favor the tables turned. Though the Bobcats were able to contain the Bangor Christian offense for most of the half, its first scoring chance for the defending champs came with 12:48 remaining in the game. With a free-kick just beyond midfield on the Richmond side of the field, Seth Pearson redirected the ball inside the box, but a heads-up play by Bobcats netminder Zach Small kept the Patriots off the board.

“I thought Richmond came out really strong and they really just dominated the whole first half,” Patriots head coach Aaron Wilcox said after the game. “We made some adjustments in the second half. I thought we played a lot better and controlled a lot more of the match. It was just too late. They were able to put another one in and at that point it was just too late.”

As the game entered into the final minutes Tribbet collected a ball from Matt Rines at the 18- yard line and sent a rocket that hit off Farnham’s hands and spun across the goal-line to put the Bobcats up 3-0.

Though Richmond was leading 2-0 going into the half, Gardner knew that any team can come back from that deficit.

“When we sat down with them at halftime we told them that the most critical goal is the next goal,” he said. “If you’re not going to score it, you better prevent them for scoring it. I think they got into the defensive mode a little earlier than I would have liked them to, so it took away from generating some offense, but later in the game they finally started to figure out to send the ball down the sides and of course Cody’s goal was the crusher.”

With the victory Gardner collects his seventh Gold Ball as a head coach, his first with Richmond, adding to the six he earned during his 39-year stint as the coach for Class A Brunswick. Richmond captured its fifth state title in school history and its first since 2007 when it defeated Ashland, 3-1.

Richmond 3,
Bangor Christian 0

Class D Boys Soccer State Championship, At Hampden Academy
Richmond — 2 1 — 3
Bangor Christian — 0 0 — 0
Goals — (R) Marcus Blake 2, Cody
Tribbet.
Assists — (R) Curtis Anderson, Matt
Rines.
Shots — Richmond 9, Bangor Christian 7.
Saves — (BC) Dennis Farnham 6,
(R) Zach Small 5.
Corner kicks — Richmond 4, Bangor
Christian 1.
Final Records — Richmond 18-0,
Bangor Christian 16-2.