But the Bangor High School baseball team will remember its 5-4 victory over South Portland in Saturday’s Class A state final as the ultimate in survival tests.

Coach Jeff Fahey’s Rams rallied twice from early deficits, then withstood a late flirtation with self-destruction at Morton Field to emerge with their second consecutive state title and 11th in school history.

“We got down in the first inning and fought back and we got down again in the fourth inning and fought right back,” said Bangor third baseman Sam Huston. “That’s just who we are. We’ve been fighting all year long to get that second trophy and we were fortunate enough to do so.”

Bangor (18-2) won it all despite mustering just three hits and committing its first four errors of postseason play.

But senior righthander Andrew Hillier battled through his own ups and downs to pitch a complete-game six-hitter and the Rams manufactured five unearned runs — four after two were out in the bottom of the fourth inning thanks in part to two of South Portland’s four errors.

“We had a lot of games like that this year where we had to grind out wins, right from the start of the season,” said Fahey. “That might have been the most poorly played game we’ve had all year, and not just for us but they didn’t play great, either. I think there were some jitters out there.”

Bangor also had to subdue a seventh-inning rally by South Portland fueled by two errors, a hit batter, and an intentional walk before the Red Riots stranded the tying run at third when Rams’ shortstop Kyle Stevenson turned a soft liner by Jacob Brown into a game-ending double play by catching Anthony Degifico off second base after making the initial play.

It was sweet atonement for Stevenson, who moments earlier mishandled a potential game-ending double-play chopper up the middle, with South Portland scoring a run on the play to make it a one-run game.

“I took my eye off the ball to make the play at second myself and it took a little bigger hop than I expected and hit off the heel of my glove,” said Stevenson of the earlier play. “I was devastated after making that error, but after that I just wanted the ball hit to me again. I’m glad it was.”

South Portland, seeking its first state title since 1952, finished its season with a 15-5 record.

“Mistakes led to almost all the runs for both teams,” said Red Riots coach Mike Owens, whose team scored three straight one-run victories to win the Western A championship. “In a game of that magnitude maybe nerves played a part or both teams were putting pressure on the other, but it’s kind of ironic that we got here on our pitching and defense and our defense let us down a little bit today.”

South Portland held leads of 1-0 and 3-1 — the two-run rally coming in the top of the fourth on four hits, one an RBI triple by DH Ben Conti — before Bangor mounted its decisive uprising with considerable Red Riots’ help in the bottom of the inning.

Johnny Cote and Marcus McCue each reached on an error and Stevenson walked to load the bases with two out.

Jordan Derrah drew South Portland starter Sam Troiano’s fourth walk of the game to force home Cote, then McCue scored the tying run on the second wild pitch of the inning.

Trevor DeLaite chopped a grounder to the right side that South Portland second baseman Sam Solomon couldn’t come up with cleanly with a dive after ranging far to his left. The ball trickled off Solomon’s glove and into shallow right field, with the single plating McCue and Stevenson to give Bangor its first lead at 4-3.

“I swung at a bad pitch there so I got behind two strikes, so after that I just tried to put something in play and give us a chance,” said DeLaite, the game’s lone repeat hitter with two singles. “We didn’t care how we got the runs.”

Hillier yielded a leadoff single to Matt Beecher in the top of the fifth, then retired six straight batters before grinding through one final challenge in the top of the seventh.

“It feels good, but a lot of hard work went into this,” said Hillier, who will play next season at the University of Southern Maine. “It’s not a coincidence that we won twice in a row.”

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