LEWISTON — The shots came fast and furious. The team firing pucks at her was superior to that attempting to protect her.

Paige Fontaine knew it. Her coach knew it. And everyone in the stands knew it.

But time after time, shot after shot, Fontaine turned them aside.

The Lewiston Blue Devils, Fontaine’s squad, lost that game against an unbeaten and nearly unblemished Falmouth squad.

By a single goal, by a count of 1-0.

The shots heavily favored the Yachtsmen. So did the time of possession, and the scoring chances. But, thanks to Fontaine, Lewiston stayed close enough to potentially come out on top, despite the obvious statistics to the contrary.

“If you look at the scores in the games we’ve played, only once have we lost by more than a goal, and that was a 3-1 loss to Greely (another top team),” Lewiston coach Ron Dumont said. “She helps add to the confidence level of the team. No one can really expect to run the table, but with a younger team, it helps that, when we lose, we are so close. We’re just that one goal away from being tied and maybe winning.”

Lofty praise for a 15-year-old freshman in her first year of girls’ varsity hockey, but praise she has completely backed up with her performance.

From the beginning

As hockey players go, Fontaine got a later start, not only as a player, but as a goalie.

“I was a goalie playing street hockey with all my friends,” Fontaine said. “We needed a goalie when I was in pee-wees, and I figured I’d try it.”

Pee-wees is the level at which players begin body checking, and also when many of the players begin to develop slapshots. That didn’t faze her in the least.

“I don’t know, I just wanted to try it, and I liked it,” she said.

Liking it turned into loving it. She played on a co-ed team, and then on a pair of teams at the same time.

“Playing with boys’ teams gave me more experience,” Fontaine said. “It made me more aggressive and got me used to more speed.”

Dumont, meanwhile, heard through the hockey grapevine — one of the more tightly-knit communities in all of sport — that come the fall of 2011, the Blue Devils had a young goaltender coming through the system that would be an instant potential starter. But it wasn’t until summer hockey preceding her enrollment that Dumont actually got to see her perform on the ice.

“I had some advance notice, in that I got to see her in summer hockey,” Dumont said.

Good timing

But even that, Dumont said, was only the tip of the iceberg.

“What really impressed me right away is her work ethic,” Dumont said. “Sometimes, and this is normal, kids come into high school, to varsity sports, and they don’t know how to work toward what they want, necessarily. They don’t know how hard they have to work. But that was never the case with her.”

The timing of her arrival on the team couldn’t have been better.

“It’s something we absolutely needed to have, coming off a year like we had last year,” Dumont said.

A year prior, the Blue Devils struggled to ice a team, and had several newcomers to the sport lace up their skates. Part of the learning process was taking some lumps on the scoreboard.

“Last year we had a lot of first-year players, and even this year, we have them now still as novice players, and then of course we have five other freshmen on the team other than Paige. To have someone as solid as she is almost like a calming influence back there.”

Adjusting and learning

As with any athlete beginning a varsity campaign as a freshman, Fontaine, despite her advanced skill set, had (and still has) plenty to learn. The first adjustment she made — and rather quickly, out of necessity — was to the speed of the game as compared to games in which she played that featured a co-ed roster.

“It’s really different, the pace is slower,” Fontaine said. “I had to adjust to that really quick, because I didn’t want my angles to be off.”

Her ability not only to adjust, but to be an informational sponge, stood out to Dumont.

“She knows what’s expected of her, every time she steps on the ice,” Dumont said. “She knows how to practice, and how to work, and I think more importantly, she’s willing to work on what she needs to get better at, rather than continuing to do what she’s good at. There’s a tendency to want to keep doing what you know how to do well rather than work on things you need to improve on. It’s not a problem for her to be criticized if it’s going to make her better. That’s what surprised me the most.”

Dumont’s laissez-faire attitude is one reason why Fontaine — and the rest of the Lewiston squad — are so comfortable learning the ropes of an admittedly tougher-than-most sport. It’s what attracted new blood to the team last season, when it almost folded, and what keeps the young squad on an even keel.

“Coach makes it fun to be out there, and I just like hanging out with everyone on the team and getting to know everyone better,” Fontaine said. “I like making myself the best I can be at whatever I am doing.”

And don’t expect that attitude to change, Fontaine said, an attitude that could mean peril for opposing teams for a few years to come, in Maine and wherever she chooses to ply her trade in the future.

“If I want to every be a pro hockey player, I know I have to stay focused. I know if I work hard, I have a better chance,” Fontaine said. “I always try my best at everything.”