SCARBOROUGH – Fourth-ranked Kennebunk opened an early lead against top seed Scarborough Saturday morning and then never relented, holding on to win 9-7 despite some last-minute heroics by Red Storm Avery Pietras.

The Rams improve to 9-5 on the season, and advance to the Class A West regional finals against second-place Massabesic, scheduled for Wednesday, June 12. Scarborough finishes the year 9-5.

“I knew it was going to be clawing and digging our way to the top,” Scarborough head coach Marcia Wood said of the season. “The way the league is this year, it’s anyone’s game. We knew it was going to be anyone’s game when you came out there [today].”

The Rams had piled up three goals before Scarborough got their first word in. That word came from Maiti Kent with 11:54 to play in the opening quarter; 41 seconds later, Avery Pietras echoed her teammate’s sentiment. In less than a minute, Kent and Pietras had slashed Kennebunk’s lead from 3-0 to 3-2 and given Scarborough the momentum.

The momentum wouldn’t stay with the Red Storm for long, as Kennebunk soon scored twice more. But Scarborough did regain control in short order, with Pietras notching her second and Ainsley Jamieson her first to narrow the gap to one again, 5-4 Rams, the tally going into halftime.

“I feel like we’re really a second-half team,” Wood said of her speech to her girls during the break. “So I just said, ‘We’ve got so much time, you just have to stay with them, you’ve got to win the draws, you have to control the game, you’ve got plenty of time to do it.”

But with 9:01 to go in the third, Kennebunk still held the lead, and by now it had swollen to 9-6. The Red Storm called timeout.

“It’s all the same thing,” Wood said, equating her timeout speech with her halftime speech. “It’s usually the same spiel – you got to win the draw, you got to control the game, it’s not over…What are we going to do when they start stalling? How are we going to adjust? How are we going to pressure?”

When the game resumed, the Rams gained possession of the ball – and tried to do nothing more than keep possession. They worked the ball in spot-on passes around the offensive perimeter, letting time fall off the clock. Scarborough needed a steal.

“They did a fabulous job on their stall,” Wood said of Kennebunk’s clock-management. “And that’s something that we’ve been working on all year…we try to pressure, but it’s hard – they were really on with their passing. We hope to give them a little bit of pressure, and that that little bit of pressure will be enough for them to drop the ball.”

When they finally got one, a mere 1:20 remained. That was plenty of time for Pietras, however. She charged up field, ducked around multiple defenders, and scored, all in 19 seconds, proving that the Red Storm had plenty of time left.

But Kennebunk won the draw after Pietras’s goal, and immediately returned to their stall tactic. Scarborough, desperate, applied triple-team pressure to force the Rams’ ball-carrier out of bounds at 36 seconds, and again at 27.

Unfortunately, though they could stop the clock effectively, Scarborough just couldn’t get their sticks on the ball and the ball in Kennebunk’s net.

Pietras had three goals in the defeat, as well as three assists, while Kent had two of each. Jamieson had one goal and one assist, and Bailey Adams had the same.

“I’m proud of them,” Wood said of the Red Storm’s season as a whole. “You lose 12 seniors, you’ve got that target on your back, you never know what’s going to come up. We’ve had a lot of girls have to step up and fill in roles, and we’ve had a lot of bumps along the way, and to still be able to finish No. 1 – to still be able to host teams for playoffs…I’m proud of them.”

Scarborough’s Avery Pietras races upfield against Kennebunk Saturday morning.
Red Storm Maiti Kent chases the ball versus Kennebunk.
Abby Corbin of the Red Storm carries the ball around a Rams defender.
Sarah Martens hurls a pass.
A Red Storm coach comforts Kaitlin Prince after Scarborough’s narrow loss to Kennebunk Saturday morning. 

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