After falling at the quarterfinal stage of the playoffs the last seven years, senior Ella Coose said she and the rest of her Portland High teammates were starting to feel “cursed.”

With one hustle play and the swipe of her stick Wednesday night, Coose ended the Bulldogs’ seven-year itch and Cheverus’ two-year run atop Eastern Class A.

Ending more than 60 minutes of manic up-and-down play, Coose reversed the curse midway through the fourth overtime by smoothly slotting a bounce shot past Cheverus goalie Hope Correia to give the third-seeded Bulldogs a 16-15 victory over the sixth-ranked Stags at Deering High.

Portland (8-5) will play Saturday at No. 2 Mt. Ararat (12-1) in a semifinal.

“This is indescribable,” Coose said. “We always lose in the first round of the playoffs. We’ve always wanted to beat Cheverus, we’ve always wanted to go past this first cursed playoff game.

“My team went through so much this whole game and the overtimes. It’s amazing.”

Coose, who missed Portland’s 10-9 regular-season loss to Cheverus (5-8) with strep throat, had looked likely to score moments before her winner when Isabel Stehli’s pass from the midfield hit her in stride alone behind the defense.

But a defender caught up to Coose just as she was about to let her shot go, knocking the ball free. Undeterred, Coose won the battle for the ground ball, slipped by another defender and bounced her shot past Correia from the left of the crease.

“She’s a tenacious player and you saw that with the way she attacked the goal,” Portland Coach Cameron McManus said. “I was freaking out because that defender slammed right into her and I was yelling about not getting a foul. But Coose showed me. She got it back and stuck it in the net.”

For a moment that she’s been waiting her entire high school career for, Coose said she was struggling to remember exactly what happened.

“I thought I was going to get a call, that it was a foul at first,” Coose said. “Then I honestly think I blacked out. I don’t even remember (scoring).”

Portland led 7-6 at halftime and 10-7 midway through the second half before Cheverus scored four goals in 1:07.

Tied 12-12 after regulation, the Bulldogs got goals from Callie Sturgeon and Merrit Ryan (game-high six goals) to lead by two after the first three-minute overtime.

But the Stags rallied in the second OT, tying it with 1:25 left on goals by Anne Veroneau and Abigail Biegal.

Stehli gave Portland the lead back with 44 seconds left, but Allie Scott finished off a pass from Veroneau with 13.3 seconds to play to again tie it and send the game into sudden death.

“We made a few bad decisions and a few mistakes but they never gave up,” Cheverus Coach Jennifer Wescott said. “They fought hard and they fought to the end. If we’re going to go out, it was good to go out like that.”

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