SCARBOROUGH — There was no ice, and the players weren’t on skates, but Katherine Millett knew exactly what to do with a crossing feed in front of the cage.

Sophomore Kylie Dalbec sped up the right flank, reached the right edge of the circle and rifled a pass across the goalmouth to her classmate. Millett never hesitated, one-timing the ball with authority past Telstar keeper Sam Tibbetts at the left post, rattling the boards with what turned out to be the winning goal as North Yarmouth Academy remained perfect on the season and earned the Western Class C field hockey crown with a 2-1 triumph over the Rebels at the Mitchell Sports Complex on Monday.

“I wasn’t expecting it at first, but I saw the ball coming, and then I was sure I was going to miss it,” Millett said. “I didn’t even know that it went in until people started yelling.”

“I usually stop the ball and take my time, and I usually miss,” Millett continued. “So I’m glad I didn’t on that one.”

That goal, with 8:38 to play in the first half, gave the Panthers (17-0) a 2-0 cushion on just three shots on net, and came after a long stretch of Telstar pressure on the other end of the field.

“We had the chances to score, and we just couldn’t finish,” Telstar coach Gail Wight said. “We had our corners, but we had high balls and high sticks. We gave them the ball a lot.”

At one point in the first half, the Rebels had six penalty corners to NYA’s two.

“When you have corners, you need to capitalize on them,” Wight said. “Those are your best chances to score, and they just didn’t get their shots off.”

NYA sophomore Mariah Farrell, thrust into the goaltending spotlight due to senior Haley Bright’s illness, held down the fort well for the Panthers. She stopped four shots on the afternoon, including two in close on a Telstar corner.

“Mariah had some great saves in practice yesterday, and today she had two huge saves when it mattered,” NYA coach Julia Sterling said. “To stop that corner, nobody could have done better.”

“She’s been doing awesome, and she’s improved tremendously, even in the last two games,” Millett said. “We just didn’t want it to get back to her. We were concentrating on stopping the ball before it did.”

Dalbec netted the game’s first goal just 6:18 into the contest on a stellar passing sequence that began with Millett. After passes to Frances Leslie and Lianna Hachborn, Dalbec tipped the ball past Tibbetts.

In the second half, trailing 2-0, the Rebels made their charge. Kayla Merrill finally scored on the team’s eighth penalty-corner attempt as her drive from the top of the circle beat everyone and rattled the cage.

Telstar couldn’t earn so much as a sniff of another penalty corner the rest of the way. Sterling shifted some players around, setting Millett up on the outside of the back line and dropping an extra defender.

“I put an (extra) defender back there with 16 minutes to go, figuring I could play a little defensively then,” Sterling said. “I felt our attack was getting a little bit tired, and that point, it didn’t matter if we scored again, we just couldn’t let them get a corner. That’s their biggest attack, and we had to stay away from it.”

The Panthers return to the Class C state title game with a chance to repeat as state champions. NYA defeated Dexter in last year’s final in extra time. This time, though, NYA will playing a bit closer to home. The state championships are at Yarmouth High School.

“All we wanted to do from Day 1 was to go to Yarmouth,” Sterling said.
“We’ve known since the summer that states were going to be in our home
town, and it’s something we wanted to strive to achieve, and now here
we are.”