AUGUSTA - After a win over Bangor in the Eastern A quarterfinal, Nate Pelletier told his Oxford Hills girls that he wasn't satisfied.

"I said, 'We've been here before,'" said Pelletier of the semifinals at the Augusta Civic Center. "It's great. It's a great atmosphere, but I'm sick of just being here.' I think the girls were too. They knew they were a better team, and they showed it."

The Vikings subsequently took two giant steps forward. They knocked off top-ranked Lawrence and toppled Cony in the regional final. Now Oxford Hills is playing in its first state championship game.

It's a moment the Vikings have been building toward for well over a decade. Former coach Jim Seavey said he envisioned the possibilities of competing for a state title while at Oxford Hills. He followed up on Bob Fallon's work, and took on the challenge of building a winner. Other coaching opportunities took him away from that mission, but others followed and kept the progress going.

"Val (Brown) came in and got them to the tournament," said Seavey, now the coach at Scarborough. "Craig (Jipson) had some great seasons, and Nate has them playing for a state championship. It's progress, step by step. They've made each step along the way."

It has been a long journey for the Vikings' program. Through its first 25 years, the team only had seven winning seasons, and two of those came between 1970 and 1972. There were only five playoff appearances, and no playoff wins.

The last 10 years has been a different story. The team went 9-9 in Brown's first year in 1997-98 and won its first playoff game. Since then, the team has had just one losing season and advanced to the tournament quarterfinals seven times. Included in those tournament appearances was their first quarterfinal win, first semifinal win and first regional championship.

"It's good to see different teams there," said Fallon, now an assistant with Seavey at Scarborough. "You always see the South Portland's, the Westbrook's or the Deering's. To see an Oxford Hills or someone like that, that's a little refreshing. It shows progress is coming, and they can compete with anybody in the league."

Fallon coached the team in 1973-74 and returned for a stint between 1987 and 1994. Prior to his tenure, the only playoff appearances came during Bob Kelly's years in 1978, 1981 and 1982. All were first round losses.

Fallon had two winning seasons and a pair of playoff appearances but also had three straight years that totaled just three wins. Oxford Hills had 13 seasons in which its won just four games or less.

"They were great kids to coach," said Fallon, who was also the football coach at the time. "They worked as hard as anybody, but the programs were lacking in those days. We got a lot of them started. These coaches now are doing a great job coaching-wise, but I'm sure they've got the programs right from the elementary grades right up through. Now they can compete with anybody."

Things like summer basketball or AAU were limited, if they existed at all. Though Oxford Hills has a large pool of communities to draw talent from, it wasn't as easy in those days. Transportation was limited, and it was hard to generate interest in all grade levels.

"It wasn't something where everyone was waiting for the season in anticipation," said Fallon. "It hadn't gotten to that point yet. A lot of the sports at Oxford Hills hadn't gotten to that point yet because we weren't reaping the benefits of the other towns in the district. We couldn't take advantage of all the communities and the kids in those communities."

Basketball wasn't a year-round endeavor. Fallon focused half his practices on the fundamentals of the game. Kids wanted to play the game, but wouldn't know how to play it properly.

"There's more that they can do with the kids now when they get into high school because they're so well-grounded in the fundamentals of basketball," said Fallon. "A coach doesn't have to spend all of his time on the basic fundamentals. He can get more into the team play strategy and things like that."

Fallon tried to get the various communities involved by holding winter programs for the younger kids. He also began a summer clinic and got parents active.

"It was limited to some degree but once you started to get the parents that played involved, their interest started to grow because they wanted their kids to play too. They'd make the sacrifice to get the kids to the school or would be more than willing to coach a youth team in their community. That kind of got it all going."

When Fallon left Oxford Hills, in 1994 he encouraged Seavey to take the job. Seavey accepted the challenge and left Gray-New Gloucester. He built upon the foundation Fallon established. The summer program expanded. The Booster Club expanded. The youth program grew significantly. He estimates he had 200 kids in the program from grades three to six.

"Each town had two or three teams," said Seavey. "So we'd have a monster schedule of youth basketball every Saturday. Then summer clinics, we'd offer five or six weeks of youth basketball when I used my high school kids to coach the young kids. Each year, the numbers kept growing and growing."

From the bottom up, the program began to solidify itself. Seavey saw young excited faces of eager basketball players and watched his varsity kids teach the next generation.

At one point, he even coached an AAU team, which featured young players that would later become the core of Jipson's team in 2000.

"It was just the kids commitment and starting to believe they were turning the corner, that they could compete with the Conys, Morse, Mt. Blue, Lewiston and Edward Little," said Seavey. "Back then, they played in the Western A tournament but played the KVAC schedule. That was tough. I just think the kids started to make a commitment when they started to experience a little success. They realized 'Hey, we can do this.'"

Seavey left for Edward Little, but Brown replaced him in 1997. The team won nine games and a preliminary game. That was after winning just 15 games the previous six years. When Jipson arrived in 2000, the Vikings posted back-to-back 15-3 records, the best in the program's history at that time.

Pelletier followed in 2005-2006. His teams went 14-4 and 16-4 and reached the semifinals both years. He kept an injury-riddled team on track this year all the way through its first regional championship.

"One of the keys is getting the attitude of the girls so that they're going to work every possession of every single game," said Pelletier. "That happened before I got here. When I came here, every single practice had the girls working hard. So I didn't have to do much in that regard. After that, this group of girls is very talented. They've played a lot of basketball in their lives. It's been a mater of getting them a little older and a little wiser on the court."

Over the years, the program raised the level of play, built expectations and generated interest. This year's unprecedented success should only fuel that excitement.

"I'm hoping what this does is it gets the kids interested in basketball at the youth levels, and they see how we play and they stick with it," said Pelletier.