SKOWHEGAN — Field hockey season here usually ends in glory. How the last one concluded, though, is something many River Hawks don’t like thinking about.
Skowhegan, to the surprise of no one, won its 20th straight regional championship last fall. But in the Class A title game, the River Hawks experienced something they hadn’t before during their two-decade run: a multi-goal loss in a state final.
“We try not to think about it as much as we can because we don’t want to think of us losing, but we definitely see it as motivation,” senior captain Callaway LePage said of the team’s 4-1 loss to Cheverus. “Getting on the field (Monday), we were all like, ‘we’re going to beat Cheverus; we’re going to push harder so we can beat Cheverus.’”
The River Hawks, head coach Paula Doughty said Monday on the first day of fall sports practices, are not a team that dwells too much on the past; “I don’t think we’re thinking about that; that isn’t the way I coach,” as she said herself.
Living on the past, after all, is not something teams intent on winning championships can afford to do.
As for Doughty’s players, nobody, as LePage said, wants to relive the specific details of last year’s state championship game defeat. Yet the overarching memories from that loss are what’s driving Skowhegan in 2022 — and with virtually the entire roster returning, the River Hawks are dead set on producing a different outcome.
This time a year ago, Skowhegan entered the season raw as ever in more ways than one. The River Hawks had no senior starters, and seven of the team’s starters were freshmen or sophomores. Although there was some varsity experience left over from the 2019 state title-winning team, they were also fresh off a 2020 season in which playing opportunities were more limited.
“I had a group of kids who had never been to a tournament, much less played in a state game,” Doughty said. “They were very, very young, and they had missed two years and had no middle school field hockey. The average age on that team was, like, 15.”
Skowhegan field hockey coach Paula Doughty watches practice Monday morning in Skowhegan. Michael G. Seamans/Morning Sentinel
Programs that win championship after championship often find ways back to title games regardless of circumstances, and that’s exactly what Skowhegan did. The River Hawks posted a perfect record in the record regular season and followed it up with Class A North tourney victories over Camden Hills, Messalonskee and Oxford Hills to claim yet another regional crown.
The state championship game would go differently. The River Hawks were forced to play from behind fairly early after Cheverus scored six minutes into the game. The team’s youth then showed as timeouts were unavailable due to temporary rules in place in 2020 and 2021. The River Hawks never fully recovered.
“We got scored on in that first part of that game, and (our players) got scared,” Doughty said. “Do I think we would have lost by a few goals if I had a timeout? No, I don’t. If we had a timeout in the early part of that game, I think it would’ve been different.”
This year, Skowhegan is a veteran team rather than one faced with inexperience. Whereas many teams enter a new season trying to replace key graduates from the year before, there will be no such task for a team that returns everyone who earned meaningful game experience a year ago.
Those players include Layla Conway and Laney LeBlanc, two of the team’s primary scorers, and Sam Thebarge, a top player on the back line. Those three were All-KVAC first-team selections, and Skowhegan also has a pair of returning All-KVAC second-teamers in sweeper LePage and midfielder Norrie Tibbetts.
Skowhegan field hockey players work through a drill during practice Monday morning in Skowhegan. Michael G. Seamans/Morning Sentinel
Skowhegan, then, was still plenty powerful in 2021, as it showed in outscoring opponents 81-4 en route to the state championship game. Yet playing from behind against Cheverus was a new experience for the River Hawks, who gave up as many goals in the loss as they did in their previous 17 games combined.
“I don’t think we went in prepared for that game,” Thebarge said of the loss, the program’s worst-ever defeat in a state title game. “Ever since then, we’ve been preparing and working a lot harder to come back and make sure that doesn’t happen again this year.”
Lack of preparation won’t be a concern this year for Skowhegan, which has finally gotten a full offseason in after having none in 2020 and a fractured one a year ago. The team had an offseason skills clinic led by the University of Michigan coaching staff as well as its annual Victories over Violence Clinic, and the vast majority of the team also resumed club field hockey.
Those experiences have made Skowhegan a closer team than the one that came together as a young squad fresh off the oddities of the early pandemic days. The new level of cohesiveness, Tibbetts said, is something everyone on the team can sense.
“We have a great team chemistry, and I think that’s because we were all together last year and did so much over the offseason,” Tibbetts said. “We set expectations after we lost last year, and it really made us determined. We’ve been doing everything we can to get better.”
Cheverus, though, is also primed for a championship run with 10 of its 11 starters returning this year. Should the Stags hold off teams such as Gorham and Scarborough while Skowhegan dispatches the likes of Mt. Ararat, Mt. Blue and Oxford Hills, it would set up for a tantalizing state title rematch — one the River Hawks have been anticipating.
“We’re going to beat them this year,” Thebarge said. “We’re coming back to win.”
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