AUBURN — The road to a state championship game is never paved the same way twice.

There might not be two more different roads than the ones that St. Dominic Academy and Scarborough have traveled on their respective trips to this year’s girls’ state hockey final on Saturday night at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

On one hand, Scarborough: This is the third consecutive year the Red Storm’s season will end at the Colisee, the second in three seasons of playing in a state final. Two years ago, Scarborough lifted the championship trophy.

On the other, St. Dom’s: Two years ago, the Saints were playing a junior varsity schedule, just two years removed from their only state championship but struggling mightily with numbers. A year ago, the Saints returned to the varsity level, eked into the playoffs, but lost quickly.

Tia Rotolico was a sophomore for the Saints when they dropped to JV because of too few players, and was on a struggling team that missed the playoffs the year before, as well as on the team that struggled in its return to the top level.

Now, she’s a leader of a team on the doorstep of a state title.

“We would talk about making it to playoffs, and just making it to playoffs last year, it was huge,” said Rotolico, the Saints’ captain and lone senior. “I could never imagine being able to play in a state game. We saw Lewiston win it last year. I never thought I could imagine what it would feel like. We were always an ‘almost’ team, with every sport that I played. We would make it almost there. It just feels good to finally make it.”

The adversity with which Rotolico has dealt during her four-year career is something that no one else on the St. Dom’s roster knows. Lexi Kesaris was a freshman on that JV squad two years ago, but the rest of the teammates are two-or-fewer-year players.

Rotolico also had to deal with the unspeakable tragedy of losing her coach, Don Boucher, to cancer just before her freshman season. Then-assistant Paul Gosselin took over for Boucher, and has led the Saints since.

“I think that under the circumstances we did the best we could back then,” Gosselin said. “I think it was a very emotional year for myself as well as for Tia and the rest of the team. I think we’ve served his honor well by continuing the program and working hard through those years.”

Gosselin said the following year — the JV year — wasn’t a bad one. A little disheartening, he said, but he embraced getting to know players and teaching them the love of the game more than anything else.

Those growing relationships with players have made this season a little more special for the coach, especially the bond he’s developed with Rotolico over four years.

“The best thing is seeing the personal connections, such as Tia being able to feel the way she is,” Gosselin said. “I’m really extremely happy for her, because after being there for four years and never giving up, and fighting through the adversity of those years, she’s made it at the top of the game. That’s a great thing.”

On paper, the Saints didn’t look like contenders — 12 underclassmen, including eight freshmen, sprinkled the roster. But knowing the players, and the talent they had, was to know that “age means nothing,” Rotolico said.

“I think from the beginning of the year, we definitely had (this) as a goal,” Rotolico said. “I thought it was possible, and then we played Greely, and I was like, that’s going to be the one obstacle we have to overcome. They were the only thing standing between us and going to states.”

The Saints lost just twice during the regular season, both defeats coming against the Greely Rangers. They flipped the script in the regional final — and freshmen scored all five goals.

Rotolico said she could hear from the locker room as Scarborough cheered, celebrating its South regional final win over Falmouth. That game preceded the Saints’ North final. She heard it, she said, but never imagined what it felt like.

When St. Dom’s late, one-goal lead fizzled, all Rotolico could think was: “Oh, no, we’re going to go into overtime.”

She said the Saints aren’t an overtime team, that luck wouldn’t favor them and they would fall to the Rangers yet again.

Freshman Avery Lutrzykowski played the hero by scoring the game-winner with 3.7 seconds left. Suddenly, the player who lost her coach just days before her freshman season, and then lost her varsity schedule the following year, was going to play for a state championship.

“I’ve never felt that way with a team before, just that sense of accomplishment and all your hard work has paid off, and all the skating we’ve done, it paid off for the year,” Rotolico said.

For the Saints to be able to accomplish what they have so far — and what they still could accomplish on Saturday — Rotolico had to take a back seat on the ice.

“Coming in this season, I knew I wasn’t going to be the best one on the team,” Rotolico said. “With the talent coming in on the team, I knew I wouldn’t necessarily be the top goal-scorer. So I knew I just had to be the leader mentality-wise. I had to lead them in that way. I couldn’t go out there and be like, ‘Oh, do this,’ because they’d go out and do it 10 times better than I would. But just keeping the spirits up, and being able to tell them, ‘OK, we’ve got to settle down, leave all the emotion in the locker room, just play our game.’ It was day and night from last year.”

“This year showed Tia’s maturity. Her leadership couldn’t be measured,” Gosselin said. “She did a great job in the locker room for us. She corralled a bunch of young girls into the gelling of a team. And she was me when I wasn’t there. As far as captains go, I can’t be more pleased.”

Rotolico said being the lone senior on a state finalist team is hard because there’s no classmate to share the end of the journey with. But her young teammates have filled that void, showing the unassisted work ethic and drive needed to get the Saints to the state championship game. Those teammates who have more games left in their careers, Rotolico said, played Wednesday’s regional final like it was their last game.

Yet this is the end of the road for Rotolico alone. There is just one game left in her high school career. It’s not a regular-season finale, or a regional semifinal. It’s the game every athlete dreams of: the one where you get to lift the biggest trophy up at the end when you win. It’s a good bet that she will put a firm grasp on that trophy if the Saints win. It’s a trophy that seemed out of reach just a couple of years ago.

“You know what it felt like to be at the bottom,” she said. “So being at the top, especially my senior year, just makes it all the more special. It gets you right in the feels.”

wkramlich@sunjournal.com

State championship information

When: Saturday

Where: Androscoggin Bank Colisee, Lewiston

Time: 7 p.m.

Who’s playing: South No. 1 Scarborough vs. North No. 2 St. Dom’s

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