BRUNSWICK

As practice began at 3 p.m. sharp Thursday afternoon, Brunswick High School boys lacrosse coach Don Glover spoke to the team about the seniors playing in the last game possible for the fourth consecutive year, that they have “made the most of their playing days” from the first day of practice their freshman year, to playing in the State Class B title game on Saturday.

The defending State Class A champion Dragons will look for their first B championship when they square off with No. 1 Greely at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland at 10 a.m. The Rangers beat Brunswick on the road, 15- 14, in overtime back in May.

Making the move to B coincided with the sport adding another class. This allowed teams to choose where to place their program and play teams based on the school’s enrollment.

“I believe adding another level with the Class C championship has been great,” Glover said. “It has allowed more team recognition and programs are growing as a result. It put a lot of growth into the sport.”

The move from A to B was a move Glover and his coaching staff felt was the right move. Glover is also on the Maine Principals’ Association committee that oversaw the change, so he knew of a lot of the back work that was put into it.

“For us personally as a program, I had to self reflect on what we wanted to do, because our population at the school has dropped so much. We’ve gone from 1,200 to under 700 students next fall, a true B school,” Glover said.

The schedule has also gained approval from Glover and his team. Having the ability to play outside of the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference, playing six crossover games with some of the schools from the Southwestern Maine Athletic Association and Western Maine Conference, has benefited the Dragons.

“In the 24 years I’ve been here, this is best schedule we’ve ever had,” Glover said. “The conferences got together to schedule more crossover games. We’ve never had that many opportunities to play outside of the KVAC. Sometimes we ended up playing a team four times in a season with the KVAC’s and playoffs. Its been more of look to see what’s around the corner mentality, its kept them sharp and their (lacrosse) IQ intellect up.”

Going from two regions in A, to just one in B is something Glover and the Dragons have also liked.

“I like the B format better. It’s not a North and South champion, it’s the best eight teams go at it, and that’s what’s happening,” Glover said.

The players were not sure what to think, but trusted their coaching staff.

“I was a little rattled at first,” senior Max Gramins said of the switch. “But I know our coaching staff has our best interest at hand. It doesn’t matter what class we are, we still went out and gave our all.”

“It made a lot of sense with our school size,” added senior Henry Doherty.

The Dragons finished 9-3 during the regular season, falling early in the season to South Portland (10-9), Greely, and A North region champion Falmouth (10-7).

Semifinal battle

Following a 20-4 win over Mt. Ararat in the quarterfinals, the Dragons hosted No. 4 Yarmouth in the semifinals.

Fast forward to 11.5-seconds remaining in the game and Brunswick trailing 13-2, Glover called a timeout to talk it over with the squad.

“‘OK, Doherty’s getting the ball,’ and he ran off the play,” Doherty remembers. “I was a little shocked coach called my number.”

Earlier, Doherty had dropped the ball on a similar play.

All the more reason Glover gave him the ball.

“He did look at me a little strange knowing he had dropped one before,” Glover said. “I didn’t care, I gave it right back to him.”

The next five seconds was a little blurry for Doherty. He remembers looking at the scoreboard.

“I looked at the clock and saw I didn’t have enough time to move around any, so I broke for the goal,” Doherty said. “They (his teammates) told me the defender checked my stick and I looked down at it. I think I must have because I checked the stick and then after the defender came up over the top and missed me, I knew it was time to shoot, and I just shot it.”

“We had total faith in him. We have so much confidence in whoever takes the shot,” Gramins said.

The blast tied the game, and the final six seconds ran off the clock on the following faceoff and the two teams headed for overtime.

Still riding the buzz from the tying goal minutes before, the Dragons went right to work in the extra frame. After Yarmouth won the faceoff, the ball came loose and Dragon Sam Dorval scooped up the groundball and passed it up top to junior captain Aiden Glover. They ran the play the coaching staff scripted, with Aiden Glover taking it behind the net and running a pick far post and finding the right-handed attackman in Gramins, “who flashes like a basketball player,” Don Glover explained, setting up an open opportunity for Gramins to take a shot.

“We’ve run it a ton of times, so we’re used to running it,” Gramins said.

A day later, both seniors reflected on the Yarmouth game, still not believing it happened, but already looking forward to Saturday’s tilt.

“We learned a lot from that game we lost against Greely,” Doherty explained. “We had a big lead and took our foot off the gas both physically and mentally. I would say we’re definitely a new team this time around. That was a different team back then, but recently, we’ve been just keeping the foot on the gas.”

“After that game, our team saw their true potential, they saw that they can’t let up, and when they don’t, they can do special things,” Coach Glover said. “Henry’s reflection is right on mark, we took our foot off the gas and made some mental mistakes in those losses. Which is OK, because we preach to the players we want to play our good lacrosse now.”

With the players donning a bracelet that reads, “we not me,” explaining the mentality of the team that they are a unit and no one individual comes first, 10 seniors look at Saturday as the last game of their high school careers, but the two senior captains in Doherty and Gramins know it’s more than just that.

“Our bracelets say underneath, ‘brothers’ on the wrist, and our secret little message ‘prove it’ on the inside,” explained Gramins. “These are things we’ve lived by all season.”

“We’ve played enough sports to know it’s all about team and what we can do as a unit, not individually,” Doherty said.

As for the 10 a.m. start, everyone involved is happy for the earlier start, after playing the final game of a busy state championship Saturday slate the past two seasons.

“I like the morning start. I think the players will respond better to it,” Don Glover said. “They know what they need to do to take care of themselves, so they’ll go to bed early the night before and get up in the morning and come to play, not having any time to think about it.”

Surely, 10 a.m. won’t come soon enough for these athletes.

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