AUBURN — Falmouth’s Mitch Ham was announced as the 2023 Travis Roy Award winner Saturday at the Hilton Garden Inn.

Ham was the second-leading scorer for the Navigators with 24 goals and 42 assists, behind only Aaron Higgins, one of the other four finalists.

Ham racked up 107 points in his final two seasons, having recorded 19 goals and 22 assists as a junior.

Ham said he believed at the beginning of the season that he might be a Travis Roy finalist, but, he added, “I had no idea that I was going to win it. It has helped to have the role models of my previous teammates that have been up here before.”

Falmouth had a Travis Roy winner and a finalist the previous two years. Owen Drummey won the award in 2021 and Charlie Adams was a finalist last season. Ham thanked both of them, along with other current and former teammates in his speech before the winner was announced at the Class A Coaches Association banquet.

He also thanked his parents, because 4-year-old Mitch Ham wasn’t quite on track to win Maine’s most prestigious award in Class A Hockey.

“To my mom and dad, I will never forget when I was 4 years old, I was crying on the floor because I didn’t want to go to skating lessons,” Ham said in his speech. “Eventually, you persuaded me to go, and now 14 years later, here I am today, and I can’t thank you enough.”

Deron Barton, Falmouth’s coach who received the Bob Boucher Coaches Award on Saturday, said Ham dominated when he had the puck and improved the play of his teammates.

“He has played center, he has since Day One, he just has improved all the way through (despite) not being the biggest on the ice,” Barton said. “He has adapted to the competition, adapting to the speed and the heaviness of play, faceoffs. But most importantly, he does two things that I haven’t seen anybody do in a very long time: Number one, he controls the game; when you control the puck, you control the game. Number two, he makes everybody on the ice with him better.”

There isn’t one specific memory that sticks out to Ham from his senior season, but he relished the time he spent with his teammates.

“Just every day going to the locker room, and, obviously, we had a lot of success this season, but the memories and the bonds that we created with all my teammates is going to last forever,” Ham said.

Falmouth went 16-2 in the regular season before bowing out in the Class A semifinals to South Portland/Freeport/Waynflete.

Barton said that Falmouth being the first school to have two finalists in the 27-year history of the Travis Roy Award was special. Ham and Higgins were joined as finalists by Cassidy Campbell of Edward Little, Lucas Hubbard of Thornton Academy and Jamie Sperlich of Biddeford/Old Orchard Beach/Massabesic.

“It’s amazing, actually,” Barton said. “Like I said, both are well-deserving, and I am humbled by it as a coach. In a coaching career, you pretty seldom come across two players that are special as they are not only individually, but they play together on the same line. They were really fun to watch and fun to coach. I couldn’t be happier for them.”

Ham is the fifth Falmouth player to win the Travis Roy Award, the most by any school. Drummey (2021), Theo Hembre (2018), Isac Nordstrom (2015) and Peter Gustavson (2005) were previous winners.

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