STANDISH – Maybe all it took for a shift of power to occur in Western Class C baseball was a shift and some power.

Having a sophomore on the mound who is eager for redemption didn’t hurt, either.

It wasn’t quite that simple, but fourth-seeded Livermore Falls became the first team in five years to beat St. Dom’s for the regional title with a 3-1 win at Mahaney Diamond on the campus of St. Joseph’s College Tuesday.

Jake Marceau’s two-run homer in the third was all sophomore reliever Willie Brown needed. Brown threw five innings of hitless relief to send the Andies to their first state championship game since 1999.

Livermore Falls (16-3) will meet two-time defending Eastern C champion Searsport, the same school they beat to win their last state title in nine years ago, at 5 p.m. on Saturday at St. Joseph’s. No. 3 St. Dom’s ended it’s season at 16-3 and will not play in the championship game for the first time since 2003.

“It feels good after what happened last year,” said Brown, who was on the mound last season when the Andies suffered a heart-breaking seventh-inning loss to the Saints in the semifinals. “I wanted this game more than anything. I was looking forward to it. I wanted another chance at them and I got it.”

Brown fanned six and walked two in his five innings and set the last seven Saints down in order.

“Willie came in and didn’t walk anybody. That’s key,” Livermore Falls coach Brian Dube said. “When he’s getting his breaking ball over for strikes, that makes a big difference.”

“We knew the curve was going to buckle us, but we hadn’t really faced anyone like that all year,” St. Dom’s coach Bob Blackman said. “We were well-prepared for it, but until you see something like that, they don’t know what to expect.”

The game was delayed nearly two hours due to thunder and lightning, but the Saints looked like they knew more of what to expect from Marceau, the Andies’ starter. They hit the ball hard off him in his two innings of work, but had little to show for it. That was due in part to center fielder Kevin Gats, who threw Shayne Curtis out at the plate on a Richard Paradis single to end the first. They got their run across in the second on singles by Patrick Bryant and Joey Gwozdz and Aaron Allen’s sacrifice fly.

“Jake was throwing strikes, but they were kind of on it, and so I talked with my assistant Jason (Dube) and Antoine (Tolton) and we decided instead of waiting, we’d make the move right off,” Dube said.

The Andies stranded a pair of runners in the second against Saints starter Joe Keaney, then took the lead for good in the third when Gats reached on a one-out single and Marceau hit a laser beam that barely cleared the fence in left.

“I took the first fastball and I was kind of regretting it at first,” Marceau said. “But that next one came in right down the middle and it felt real good off the bat. I actually wasn’t sure if it was going to get over.”

“That really gave us the confidence to finish it up,” Dube said.

Brown made that confidence grown, setting the Saints down 1-2-3 in the third and yielding only harmless two-out walks in the fourth and fifth.

“Last year I threw them a lot of curve balls and they hit the ball somewhat,” said Brown, who had pitched six innings in relief against Mountain Valley during the regular season. “This year, I stuck with the fastball, threw in the curve once in awhile and I had good defense behind me.”

The Andies took advantage of St. Dom’s defense in the fifth. Kevin Gats came up with one out and saw the second baseman shifted behind the bag, then went the other way to the spot he had vacated for his second hit.

“It was a curve on the outside and I took it the other way,” Gats said. “I thought the second baseman was going to be there.”

Brown followed suit and took advantage of a large swath of open acreage in between the right fielder and the line by stoking the first pitch he saw from Keaney there for an RBI triple.

“If they’re going to give it to me, I’ll take it,” Brown said. “I closed my stance a little bit and backed off the plate so they’d give me a pitch away and I got it.”

“We had scouted them twice and they didn’t hit a ball to the right side, and in batting practice, everything was hit to the left side. They didn’t even put a guy in right field (to shag flies),” Blackman said.

St. Dom’s reliever Greg LaBonte kept the Andies in check from there, but the Saints never threatened.

“I reminded them in the seventh inning what happened last year in the seventh inning, and that you can’t assume anything,” Dube said. “We had to go out and finish it.”