WINDHAM — It was the most anticipated game of the softball regular season. And it lived up to expectations.

Kennedy Kimball hit a go-ahead home run in the fifth inning, Kyla Harvie made a diving catch to help Brooke Gerry finish off a dominant outing, and Windham defeated freshman phenom Addison DeRoche and Cheverus, 3-1, in a matchup of 15-0 teams.

“Oh my gosh, it was crazy. Even seeing how many people were in the crowd today, the energy was there,” Gerry said. “We knew that it was going to be a good game no matter what.”

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And it was. The game was a showdown of two of the state’s best pitchers in Gerry, the 2023 Varsity Maine Player of the Year and University of Rhode Island commit, and DeRoche, who before throwing a varsity pitch was already drawing interest from NCAA Division I power conference teams.

Windham, the reigning Class A champion, entered the regular-season finale as the No. 1 team in the Varsity Maine poll, while Cheverus was ranked No. 2.

Both pitchers were on their game. Gerry struck out 14 while allowing four hits, and DeRoche fanned 12 while giving up three hits.

“We know each other on a personal level,” said Gerry, who played with DeRoche on the New England Elite team in the winter. “Us going against each other, it was a lot of fun.”

Playing on the biggest stage of her high school career, DeRoche was unfazed.

“It’s awesome, it’s what you look forward to,” she said. “All season, we’d been looking forward to this game. Just the environment, it was electric. … We gave it our all today, but we came up short.”

Windham again found the winning formula in a big game.

“I’m going to give all the credit back to the experience that we got last year,” Windham Coach Darcey Gardiner said. “We played in some big games last year going through the playoffs, and I really think we rode on that coming into this game.”

Cheverus took a 1-0 lead in the first inning when Haley Lamontagne singled home Kelsey Cassidy. The Stags handed that advantage to a pitcher who hadn’t allowed a run all season, until Windham scratched across a run in the fourth when Gerry bunted for a single, took second on a throwing error, went to third on a passed ball and scored on a wild pitch.

The Eagles traded small ball for the long ball in the fifth. Kimball got the pitch she was looking for low in the zone and pounded it over the left-field wall for her second home run of the season.

“It felt really nice,” Kimball said. “I made a lot of adjustments (from) my previous at-bat. … I knew exactly what pitch she throws that I wanted to hit, and I found that. So it felt nice for that to work out the way it did.”

Windham tacked on another run later in the fifth when Harvie reached on an error and scored on a passed ball.

In the sixth, Cassidy walked and Lamontagne drilled a double into the left-center field gap, putting two Cheverus runners in scoring position with one out. Windham opted to intentionally walk DeRoche, and a strikeout brought the Eagles one out away from escaping the jam.

Ashley Connor then lofted a fly ball to shallow right field. Enter Harvie, who dove and made the catch at full extension to maintain the two-run lead.

“I knew that if something did come my way, I had to go all-out and do what I can for my team,” Harvie said. “At first, maybe I’m just like ‘Uh oh,’ but I feel like I know I can do it.”

Cheverus wasn’t done, as Bella Napolitano-Aberle (error) and Sadie Collins (single) reached with one out in the seventh, but Gerry got two groundouts to end it.

“I told the kids, win or lose, we’re going to learn something. We definitely did that,” Stags Coach John Eisenhart said. “What I loved about our team today was our compete level. We really competed, we adjusted as the game went on at the plate. … Overall, I’m just really proud of my team.”

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