The St. Dominic Academy field hockey team’s perfect season had a perfect ending.

Hannah Trottier-Braun, the state’s all-time leading scorer, put the ball in the cage one final time in double overtime against Winthrop in the Class C state championship game, giving the Saints a 3-2 win and their first state title.

Such perfection earned St. Dom’s the Fall Team of the Year honors at the Varsity Maine Awards.

“You couldn’t write a book about it,” said Brian Kay, a co-coach along with Jenn Brown. “The way everything happened, double overtime, Hannah getting her 59th goal (of the season). It was just amazing.”

The 2017 season also was the perfect way to send off Kay, who is stepping away after 18 years of coaching at St. Dom’s.

“We definitely did it for him,” forward Kylie Leavitt said. “He loved every minute of it, so doing that for him was really great.”

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The Saints went undefeated with a high-powered offense, just the way Kay likes it. St. Dom’s scored 143 goals and only allowed nine.

“We had so many people that could score,” forward Paige Cote said, “and this season we worked on passing it up the field and sending the ball in, so there were so many different goal scorers and we were able to do it so frequently, and it really helped us out.”

The Saints’ season also was one of redemption. St. Dom’s suffered a heartbreaking loss in the 2016 regional final to eventual state champion Oak Hill, which won in overtime after tying the game late in regulation.

That loss served as motivation for the 2017 Saints.

“Two years ago when we lost at regionals, I think we came into (this past) season knowing that we could do it this year because we had gone so far,” Cote said.

Forward Kylie Leavitt said that Brown, a first-year co-coach, told the team it had the talent to be dominating. The players started to buy into those claims after an early season win, in overtime, against Class B powerhouse York.

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“You just feel like when you win that game, you feel like you can win states,” Brown said. “That was the turning point. I think it gave our girls a lot of confidence.”

“I think after we beat York in that first overtime game,” Cote said, “we knew that it would be a good season and that we could go really far and pretty much do anything that we put our minds to.”

Leavitt said Brown’s addition to the team helped create a sense of togetherness among the players.

“We actually were a team, finally, and we weren’t fighting on the field anymore,” Leavitt said.

The Saints maintained that unity in a 3-2 win over Spruce Mountain in the regional final, and even more so in the state championship game.

“It’s a scary place to be (17-0 and playing in a championship game), but they had the grit and the grind to … (get) it done,” Brown said. “The fact that they had that heart to go 18 games and win all 18 games and score that many goals, their minds were in it, they never stopped the whole season.”


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