By Randy Whitehouse,Staff Writer

BRUNSWICK – It turns out that all Lewiston needed to finally get the better of its biggest nemesis, Brunswick, was some rain and a change of scenery.

Oh, and playing its best game of the year helped a little, too.

The third-seeded Blue Devils beat No. 2 Brunswick for the first time in the brief but intense rivalry and earned their first ever regional championship berth with a 10-8 victory on a soggy Saturday evening on the turf at Ryan Field on the campus of Bowdoin College.

“For years and years, we’ve been going at it and we always seemed to fall a little short,” said Lewiston coach Tom Fournier. “Today, it’s almost like a monkey off our back. We finally got it done.”

For Wednesday’s regional final, Lewiston awaits the winner of Monday’s Messalonskee-Mt. Ararat semifinal.

Senior Josh Rivet and Jon Fournier tallied three goals apiece for the Devils (11-4), who were outshot, 28-22, but controlled the pace for much of the match.

“For three years, we have not beat this team, (losing) twice this year, and this was probably our best game of the season,” Jon Fournier said. “We put it all together today.”

“Lewiston can capitalize on a lot of transition stuff on the turf, which is good for them,” said Brunswick coach Don Glover. “Third time’s a charm. They earned it.”

Sophomore goalie Nate Rivet (12 saves) staved off a late rally, and was aided by a defense that kept a lid on Brunswick junior sniper Drew Sfirri, who scored just once.

“He’s their shooter. We kind of focused on him. The last time we played them, he had 16 shots against us,” Tom Fournier said.

“The second (regular season) game against them, we had a lead like that going into the second and third quarters and we lost in overtime,” Nate Rivet said. “The offense had done their part. I knew that no matter how many goals we had, we had to step it up defensively.”

Brunswick (11-3) led just once, when Dustin Nadeau (four goals) scored the first goal of the game a little over three minutes in. Three minutes later, Zach Sheltra (two goals) answered off a nice feed from Josh Rivet. Fournier gave the Devils the lead for good with his first marker with 5:24 left in the period.

“I thought we moved the ball,” Tom Fournier said. “In the first half, we kind of attacked their short sticks a little bit. We found what we thought were mismatches, got up a little early, and then hung on by our fingernails.”

Sheltra, Jonathan Roy and Josh Rivet added goals before the first period ended to give Lewiston a 5-2 lead. The Devils maintained a three or four-goal cushion for the bulk of the rest of the contest.

Lewiston suffered a brief scare early in the second quarter when Josh Gomez scooped up a loose ball that rolled out of Nate Rivet’s goalie stick and found a wide-open net that made it a 6-3 Lewiston lead. Rivet, a converted midfielder, redeemed himself two minutes later when he made a perfect deep pass to Tim Gilbert, who found Travis Lebrun, who set up Fournier for a momentum-changing goal.

“It’s scary when you drop a ball like that,” Nate Rivet said. “Through the season, I noticed that when this stick hits moisture, the ball is tough to hold onto. I tried to release it early and I didn’t bring it as far back as I normally would.”

Brunswick went into a zone defense for the rest of the half, and part of the second half. Lewiston was content to slow it down and ended a third quarter that saw just two goals with the same three-goal advantage that it had to start the second half.

“We’ve been a bad faceoff and ground-ball team pretty much the whole year, but today I think we beat them in both categories,” Jon Fournier said. “And when they went into that zone, we probably had a good three-minute or four-minute possession”

Josh Rivet and Zach Blauvelt scored early in the fourth quarter to give the Devils a 10-6 lead. The Dragons made a late run with back-to-back goals by Nadeau that pulled them within two with less than a minute left. But a terrific save by Rivet denied Nadeau another goal with 30 seconds remaining, and Lewiston ran out the clock.

“In the past, we’d had three-goal deficits, four-goal deficits against them and we’ve been able to chip away and pull it out,” Glover said. “This time, they were able to keep the momentum. They were confident. We had them on the ropes toward the end, and they came up defensively and their goalie made some great saves.”