TURNER — Leavitt opened the first half Friday night with a sputter and finished it with a cough.

Still, the Hornets were up by a touchdown. Still, they had umpteen seniors motivated by the indignity of a stunning playoff loss on Libby Field a year ago. Still, they were in supreme command.

“I told those seniors, you guys have been there, you know what to do, so take us home,” Leavitt coach Mike Hathaway said.

Two interceptions by Clay Rowland and touchdowns in triplicate by Conor O’Malley, Nate Coombs and Billy Bedard crafted an essentially perfect third quarter for Leavitt, which cruised to the Western Class C football championship with a 48-21 rout of Spruce Mountain.

O’Malley rushed for three scores and Coombs chewed up 161 all-purpose yards for Leavitt (10-0), which won its fourth regional title in five years and its sixth since 1995.

Leavitt will face Saturday’s Waterville-Winslow winner in the state final Saturday, Nov. 23 at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland. Game time will be announced Monday.

“We weren’t going to let this slip away,” O’Malley said. “We came out a little slow, but that second half we came out fast.”

To say the least.

Spruce Mountain (8-3) went 68 yards in just over a minute to close within 21-14 right before the half. Peter Theriault went deep for 40 yards to Andrew Darling and found Deonte Ring for 11 more before finishing the work himself with a 7-yard quarterback keeper.

Thanks to winning the coin flip and deferring its option, the Phoenix also received the second-half kickoff. Spruce threw on all three downs. Two fell incomplete. The third aerial skipped off the fingertips of intended receiver Matt Vigue and into Rowland’s hands at the Phoenix 48.

“Clay’s been great for us in the secondary all year. You look at all his interceptions, they’re all against the best quarterbacks and best teams in the league,” Hathaway said. “He comes up big in big-time games. He’s the leader for us in that secondary. There’s a bunch of good players there, but he’s the voice. He’s the guy back there, and he was great again tonight.”

Leavitt needed only two plays to exact the toll.

Coombs carried eight yards off left tackle before O’Malley went right, broke two tackles and scooted 40 yards to his third TD of the night.

It was quick redemption for the two seniors, both of whom had lost fumbles in the first quarter and blamed themselves a bit for the Hornets not owning a bigger lead.

“You’ve just got to keep your composure,” Coombs said. “We always say it’s the next play that’s most important. You’ve got to put the previous play out of your mind and play downhill.”

Another three-and-out by Spruce led to a 71-yard Leavitt drive that featured liberal doses of O’Malley, Coombs and sophomore wildcat quarterback Bedard. Coombs capped it with a 3-yard run for a 34-14 lead with 7:32 left in the third.

Rowland picked off a deep ball on the next Phoenix play from scrimmage. This time the Hornets went 77 yards in eight plays, all runs, punctuated by Bedard’s 8-yarder.

And just like that it was 42-14. Total yards in the third quarter at that point: 188 to 4.

“They make you make mistakes. They make you pay,” Spruce Mountain coach Walter Polky said. “Mike does a great job with them. It’s the physicality that team brought. They were a powerhouse. They deserved to win the game.”

Senior QB Tyler Chicoine applied the finishing touches in the fourth quarter. He aired it out 40 yards to Coombs and 11 to Nate Rousseau before cashing in a 5-yard TD run.

Andrew Darling, who recovered one of the early fumbles along with Anthony York, completed the scoring with a 4-yard run for Spruce.

Theriault ran 36 yards to the end zone on Spruce’s second play of the game after O’Malley’s giveaway to supply the Phoenix a 7-0 lead.

Spruce Mountain also jumped out to the advantage in the regular season meeting before Leavitt responded with four unanswered scores in a 25-6 win.

This time it was three straight TDs. Rousseau rushed for the first from two yards out on the Hornets’ ensuing drive. Matt Thibodeau’s extra point tied it.

“There’s a lot of adrenaline when you come out for a game like this, especially against a team that’s right down the road,” Hathaway said. “We were pretty jacked up before the game, and we expected that might happen at the start of the game. After that we told them it was just like last time and we’ve got to regain our composure.”

Will Parkin and Nick Nason’s combined sack of Theriault for a 17-yard loss on fourth down gave Leavitt possession near midfield late in the first quarter. The Hornets ultimately converted that into a 2-yard TD run by O’Malley.

Mitchel Davis’ punt at the end of Leavitt’s next series pinned Spruce at its own 3. Matt Roddy’s recovery of a botched handoff then made easy work for the Hornets’ backfield, with O’Malley barreling in from a yard away.

All that momentum seemed to evaporate with the late first-half heroics by Theriault. Somebody forgot to tell the Hornets, though.

“We were frustrated that we were only up by a touchdown, but we were up,” O’Malley said. “We just knew we needed to come out and keep playing that hard defense. We never took a break. We just kept going and going and going.”

Leavitt’s cadre of coaches didn’t have to say much.

“It wasn’t a lot of fire and brimstone stuff,” Hathaway said. “It was more just a few adjustments we wanted to make with some formations that we use, and some slight adjustments to some schemes that we were using.”

Theriault was 10-for-25 for 132 yards through the air and 14 for 72 on the ground to lead the Phoenix, who will return most of their team in 2014.

“For a team that never had a winning record (before this season), I’m proud of what our team accomplished,” Polky said. “The way we finished, we played hard the whole way. There’s times we could have faltered. That’s the way our team has been all season. That’s due to our seniors. We’ve got some work to do in the offseason.”

Bedard (13 rushes, 95 yards) and O’Malley (12 for 89) nearly joined Coombs (16 for 107) in the century club.

Leavitt looks to win its first state title since hoisting the Class B Gold Ball in 2009. The Hornets lost in the B final in both 2010 and 2011.

“It sounds great. I’ve been dreaming of this for a long time, playing at Fitzy senior year,” Coombs said. “Sophomore year was obviously a great feeling, but I just feel like more of a part of the team this year.”

koakes@sunjournal.com

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