LEWISTON – Who ever knew a loss could be this important?

After blowing through the bulk of their schedule, the Lewiston High School girls’ ice hockey team ran into a rough patch. A tie was the start of it.

A home loss to Biddeford was the icing on the not-so-fun cake, especially since the Devils had defeated the Tigers earlier in the season, 7-3.

“We lost, and I think it woke the team up a bit,” Lewiston coach Ron Dumont said. “You can’t just show up, and you have to expect to compete every game.”

The rest of the way, the Blue Devils were untouchable. They eventually avenged that loss to Biddeford in the state final, earning for Lewiston the first MPA-sanctioned girls’ state hockey championship, and earning the distinction as this year’s Sun Journal girls’ hockey team of the year.

Facing that adversity, Dumont said, was a big key to the team’s ultimate success.

“You’re not going to win every game,” Dumont said. “Of course, everybody wants to, and you never go into a game saying, ‘OK, we’re going to lose.’ But when you do face that adversity, it’s important to come back and play hard.”

The state title game was the largest and ultimately the happiest milestone, but there were others the team accomplished over the course of the season, too.

“You put it out there, and you tell the kids, ‘These are our expectations,'” Dumont said. “When the really started believing it, maybe December. We play Biddeford for the first time, and they’ve always been a nemesis for us. We know they’re going to be strong. We’d been on the road pretty much the whole season to that point, and we went in a beat them.”

And then, of course, there’s the best hockey rivalry in the state, boys or girls.

“St. Dom’s is always a rivalry for us, and that team has been on top forever,” Dumont said. “It’s important for any team to be able to shed old baggage in the sense that, ‘OK, we can beat this team.’ We’d never beaten them, either. We beat this this year, and we beat them convincingly.”

The balanced scoring Lewiston received was instrumental in its success. Freshman Marisa Zamrock and senior Katie Cobb, along with junior Emilie Cloutier and sophomore Sara Marden typified that balance.

“There was so much diversity as far as who scored and who contributed,” Dumont said.

That only bodes well for a potential repeat. Just three seniors – defenseman Michelle Rancout and goalie Stephanie Belanger are the other two – will leave this roster, and the crop of younger players coming in from the middle school should fill in nicely.

At Lewiston, this news makes plenty of folks smile. Elsewhere in the league? It’s back to the drawing board to figure out how to slow the team down.