Gunnar Wade of Lewiston High School fires a shot on goal over Kyle Mooney of Edward Little during the regular season. Wade scored on the play. (Daryn Slover/Sun Journal)

Gunnar Wade entered his senior season with a larger leadership role and looking to prove that he could help Lewiston maintain its run of boys’ lacrosse success.

“A big thanks to Jayden (Wilson) and the fellow seniors,” Wade said. “We took the team to a good place this year.”

Wade also took on a bigger role within the Blue Devils’ offense, finishing with 31 goals, which was second on the team. He was equally valuable setting up scores, tallying a team-high 37 assists.

“Gunnar doesn’t score a lot of goals, but he is close to leading every team he’s been on in assists,” Blue Devils coach Ben Fournier told the Sun Journal in June. “He is a great playmaker and has great vision on the field.”

Wade played attack for the Lewiston varsity team for four years, and during that time he became accustomed to setting up the team’s other scorers. He’s also come to enjoy assisting on goals more than scoring them.

“It’s just helping my teammates,” Wade said. “It’s not really all about getting the goals, scoring the goals, it’s about helping my teammates, just getting goals up on the board, and just helping get the win.”

It’s hard to mention Wade (32 goals, 22 assists) without also mentioning Wilson. In fact, Wade refers to his fellow senior several times while looking back on the season. The two started playing alongside each other long before high school, and their roles and skills are similar — they’re both lefties who play attack and can score and assist at a high level.

“The past two years … it felt like a lot of stuff generated off our two sticks. It always came back to our two sticks,” Wade said. “We kind of have that connect, we’ve had that connect for a little while now.”

Wade and Wilson, along with fellow seniors Garrett Poussard, Ryan Bossie and Brayden Charest helped the Blue Devils again be a force in Class A North.

Lewiston went 10-4 and reached the region semifinals. The Blue Devils gave eventual state champion Thornton Academy a scare in early May, and then won their final four regular-season games to earn a home A North quarterfinal game against Deering, which they won 15-9.

Individually, Wade passed up assistant coach Jon Fournier as Lewiston’s all-time points leader with 304 (127 goals, 177 assists).

“It’s pretty cool,” Wade said. “I don’t really think about it because I try to stay humble about that stuff.”

He added: “I couldn’t have done a lot of the things I did without Jayden, the senior class and the Fourniers.”

Wade will continue his lacrosse career at St. Joseph’s College in Standish, where he plans to study Business Adminstration.

“They’re an up-and-rising team,” he said. “I just went there for orientation, and they had, I think, 10 freshman recruits just this year.”

Gunnar Wade of Lewiston works his way upfield against the defense of Deering’s Bailey Eide during the Class A North quarterfinals at Garcelon Field last month. (Lee Horton/Sun Journal)

Lewiston’s Gunnar Wade tries to work around Messalonskee’s Nicholas Poulliot during the the Class A North semifinal at Don Roux Field in 2017. (Lee Horton/Sun Journal)

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