WATERVILLE — Emilie Cloutier flipped her scorecard and glanced to the left. Two courts away, teammate Michelle Nadeau had done the same. The red numbers on each card — Eastern Maine school were assigned the red scoring numbers — signaled that Cloutier and Nadeau had won five games each in their second sets.

The race was on.

“I wanted to be that third point so bad,” Cloutier said, a smile taking up most of her face as she squinted into the sunlight. “She was winning all of her games, and I’d lost a couple, and I wanted to be the next one off.”

“I thought I was going to get off the court before Emilie did,” Nadeau admitted. “I looked over and she was really kicking it. Oh well, I tried.”

Both seniors, Cloutier and Nadeau really didn’t mind who finished up first, as long as one of them did with a positive result.

Cloutier won the race, and with that clinching point — less than one minute before Nadeau also won — lifted the Lewiston girls’ tennis team to its fifth consecutive Class A state championship, and 11th overall.

“Each one of the girls, before the match, I talked to them and told them they couldn’t depend on another teammate to get it done, that they each had to play their game,” Lewiston coach Anita Murphy said. “They were outstanding.”

Lewiston took out Gorham 5-0, with each match lasting just two sets. The Rams are the fifth different opponent the Lewiston girls have defeated in the state final in the last five seasons.

“It’s disappointing, yeah,” Gorham coach Sonja Frey said. “I really felt it would be 2-3 or 3-2. We didn’t come to the plate like I thought we might.”

The Blue Devils’ top doubles tandem of Jessica Bowen and Becca Lessard spent less than an hour on the court and walked off with a 6-0, 6-1 win over Gorham’s Sarah Robinson and Megan Creeden.

On the next court over, Lewiston’s rookies at No. 2 doubles came through, too. Paige LeBlond and Brittany Martin slugged out a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Emily Estes and Chloe Johnson to put Lewiston on top 2-0 in the team match.

“After the match they had against Brunswick, we worked hard with them to get ready for this match,” Lewiston coach Anita Murphy said. “We had them work hard with the first doubles team.”

That set the stage for one of the singles players to clinch the title. All three won their first sets, all by a score of 6-3. Both Cloutier and Nadeau turned on the afterburners in the second.

Cloutier finished off Natalie Egbert at No. 1, 6-3, 6-1, and moments later Nadeau dispatched Sarah Moir at No. 3, 6-3, 6-0.

Abby Blaisdell capped the victory with a win at No. 2 singles, 6-3, 6-3 over Hannah Shorty in similar, frustrating fashion.

“I’ve been a teaching pro and coach for 25 years, and they have volumes of papers on, ‘I’m better than that person, so how did they beat me?’ Sometimes I could kick myself,” Frey said. ” … I teach them a good serve, if you watched them it would go right into their bodies, and it didn’t matter. They’d reach right out and just poop it back. They’ll break your heart playing that way, and that’s what (Lewiston) did. They have an MBA on how to just keep the ball in play, and they will make you make another shot, and another shot, until you miss.”