LEWISTON – No high school sport in Maine is growing more exponentially than lacrosse, and few lacrosse programs in the state are ascending the ladder with such giant steps as Lewiston High School.
You couldn’t miss that maturing process on a recent Saturday morning. Of course, Lewiston’s systematic squelching of Mt. Blue in a Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference boys’ clash on a water-logged field in Farmington was only a tiny detail in the equation.
The real indicators of that night-to-day transformation were an hour away, in the form of settings on the Blue Devils’ VCRs and TiVos back home.
“There are two NCAA lacrosse semifinal games going on right now on ESPN,” explained Lewiston coach Tom Fournier, “and I bet almost every kid set the timer and is planning to watch those games when they get home. Five years ago, you absolutely wouldn’t have imagined that.”
Go back seven years and you wouldn’t find a lacrosse program at Lewiston, or at two dozen other schools that have added the ancient Native American sport since the Maine Principals’ Association first sanctioned a state tournament in the late 1990s.
Fund-raising efforts hoisted Lewiston’s infant program from recreational department offering to club sport to varsity outfit in short order, and the Blue Devils have avoided many of the growing pains you’d expect from a niche sport that competes with baseball, track and field and plain, old senioritis.
Lewiston (9-3) enters the Eastern Class A post-season on a roll after scoring 33 goals and allowing eight in its final two league games. The Blue Devils hit double digits in the victory column Wednesday by silencing St. Dom’s, 14-5, in the annual Morgan McDuffee Memorial game.
“I think this is the best team we’ve had,” said Travis Lebrun, who scored three goals at Mt. Blue and matched that performance in the win over St. Dom’s. “We practice hard.”
There’s no secret formula to Lewiston’s evolution from expansion team to regional playoff contender.
Several of the school’s top male athletes, including the coach’s son, junior Jon Fournier, have paid their dues with the program. Best of all for the coach, he hasn’t needed to recruit.
In a time when extreme and alternative sports sell themselves to student-athletes, coach Fournier typically welcomes four or five solid, well-schooled freshmen every April.
“We’re seeing kids come up through the (recreation) department who have played three or four years,” he said. “They’ve got the stick skills. We don’t have to start from scratch.”
Early Lewiston teams learned on the fly and took their lumps from more established programs Yarmouth, North Yarmouth Academy, Brunswick and Mt. Blue.
Now a perennial threat to beat some of those teams and put up a fair fight against the others, the Blue Devils haven’t forgotten their program’s pioneers.
“I think last year’s group is really the one who put us on the map,” Jon Fournier said. “We had three seniors who played four years on the varsity.”
Better stick skills mean crisper passing and a heightened level of teamwork, which equals more goals for everyone.
In the past, Lewiston relied on Jon Fournier or another front-line attacker for five or six goals per contest. Fournier’s still a shoo-in for his hat trick, sometimes in a single period, but the Blue Devils have scrawled an abundance of new names in the scoring column.
Zach Sheltra, Bobby Labbe, Josh Rivet, J.R. Roy and Matt Parker joined Fournier and Lebrun as goal-scorers against Mt. Blue. Eight different Devils found the net in the McDuffee contest, led by Sheltra and Lebrun with three tallies each.
Assuming Lewiston gets past the preliminary round for the second straight season, the Blue Devils need that balance in potential pairings with NYA or Brunswick down the road.
“We’re practicing hard. Getting to the KVAC championship was definitely our goal from day one,” Sheltra said. “We know we’ll have to go through Messalonskee or Brunswick or maybe even Mt. Ararat.”
Tom Fournier remembers a time not that long ago when Lewiston and St. Dom’s were the state hockey elite and the Portland-area upstarts didn’t have a prayer of competing with them. Time and commitment leveled the ice. Now, the coach sees a similar trend playing itself out in lacrosse as Lewiston sets its goal of returning the favor.
Whether it’s watching playoff games or winning playoff games, Lewiston is making its case as a lacrosse town. Who knew?
“It’s kind of the reverse of what happened in hockey, and it only took 10 years,” Fournier said. “Lacrosse has just exploded. It’s a great thing.”
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