By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer

FARMINGTON – As thoroughbreds go, the Lewiston High School boys’ lacrosse team doesn’t consider itself a bunch of mudders.

“We’re a little like Giacomo. We need a dry track,” coach Tom Fournier said. “We’re a fast team. We want to run.”

With the first few rays of sunshine peeking through the sky Saturday morning after a week of rain, field conditions at Mt. Blue weren’t conducive to anything this side of filming a commercial for laundry detergent.

Their ability to stage an impromptu track meet restricted, the Blue Devils stuck to the basics, won most of the ground balls, played keep-away and hammered out a 12-4 KVAC victory over the Cougars.

Lewiston (9-3) avenged a pair of frustrating losses to Mt. Blue last spring. The second verdict was a one-sided defeat in the Eastern Class A quarterfinals.

“They crushed us,” said junior attack and coach’s son Jon Fournier, who led the Blue Devils’ reversal of fortune with four goals and four assists. “Last year was definitely on our minds.”

“Our three-year starting goalie went down with an injury in the first five minutes of the game,” coach Fournier said of last June’s forgettable finish. “It left a bad taste in our mouths, and it’s a lot of the same players. We have three or four freshmen, but everyone else was here that day.”

Lewiston is the more experienced and skilled team this year, and the Blue Devils manifested those advantages into a 4-0 lead in the first five minutes and a 7-1 disparity at halftime.

Jon Fournier, Travis Lebrun and Bobby Labbe deflated the Cougars (4-7) with three tallies in a 30-second span. Lewiston won each face-off in the sequence, kept Mt. Blue on its heels with pinpoint passing and never surrendered possession.

Josh Rivet fed Fournier’s second goal of the game with a steal and quick pass in the Mt. Blue defensive zone. Fournier and Zach Sheltra worked the ball to Lebrun on the next trip down the saturated field. J.R. Roy found Labbe for the third strike.

“The field at Oak Hill (a 21-4 Lewiston victory on Friday) wasn’t muddy at all,” Sheltra said. “Today, we just tried to sustain as much offense as we could with the ball in the air.”

Evan Zanthos put Mt. Blue on the board at 1:31 of the second quarter, but Sheltra scored in transition at 5:58 to restore the four-goal cushion.

Then the Blue Devils returned to their quick-strike ways, delivering a pair of short-handed goals with less than four minutes remaining in the half. Fournier fed Lebrun for the first goal. After winning the ensuing face-off, Fournier ran uncontested up the middle of the weather-beaten turf and sent a scorcher past goalie Justin Davis.

“On a day like today, you try to get the ball from Point A to Point B faster by keeping it off the ground,” Tom Fournier said. “We were able to do that and score some nice transition goals.”

Davis kept the Cougars in contention with 17 saves. He made six consecutive stops late in the first period, most of them at point-blank range.

Seven different players scored a goal for Lewiston, with nine Blue Devils in the scoring column in all. Lebrun finished with three goals and an assist.

Rivet, Roy and Matt Parker each found the net in the second half.

The win ends Lewiston’s regular season. The Blue Devils are scheduled to play St. Dom’s in the annual Morgan McDuffee Memorial game Wednesday unless the final Heal Points indicate that the Saints are their opponent in the preliminary round of the tournament.

Xanthos and Nate Pickrell each scored two goals for the Cougars.