Greeted by fistbumps from teachers and students, Peter Sargent and members of the boys’ soccer team walked the Deering High School halls Wednesday morning being treated as champions the day after winning the Class A South regional title.
Though the players and coaches say the job is not finished, I’m here to tell you otherwise. Regardless of Saturday’s Class A boys’ soccer state championship result, this Deering High School boys’ soccer team should forever call themselves winners.
The storied Deering High School athletic program of my childhood fell on hard times. And after a dozen years, a Rams team is finally back in a state title game, slated for a 12:30 p.m. matinee against Lewiston at Messalonskee High School in Oakland. It’s the first state championship appearance in program history.
“The big difference this year is that we have guys who have stepped up and learned from past years’ failures to step up,” 13th-year coach Joel Costigan said. “There’s just a lot of grit on this team and less individuality.”
Thank Sargent and classmate Ethan Fisher for that. They played on a team last fall that ended its season, in their minds, prematurely. Sargent and Fisher realized as sophomores what they’d need to do to lead the Rams as juniors. On the surface, holding their teammates accountable sounds easy. It’s not, and the reason why many talented high school teams flop.
“What really does it for us is our discipline,” Fisher said. “We’re always making sure our guys are on time and keeping them in check. … That’s definitely attributable to our success.”
The team-first mentality manifests itself over and over again. At the macro level, the program fielded full first team, junior varsity and varsity rosters for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual players demonstrated their selflessness in switching positions, like senior Avery Bassi-Lawrence, who moved from a table-setting role at wing forward to center back and freshman Nathan Dimandya, who began the season coming off the bench as a center midfielder but moved into a starting role after a transition to outside back.
Seeded No. 3 in Class A South, Deering’s storybook playoff journey includes a pair of double-overtime wins and a 1-0 victory over rival Portland in the regional final on Tuesday before a crowd of more than 1,000 on neutral ground in Kennebunk.
“There’s so much that goes into winning during the playoffs, grit being one, luck being another, but you’ve got to have a shared philosophy and shared goal,” Costigan said. “Soccer’s a great way to give guys who might have distractions an opportunity to just focus.”
The boys’ soccer team too doubles as a beacon for student body unity. More than 150 students made the trip to Kennebunk for the regional. That it was against Portland is even sweeter. A tough game between the lines gives way for even more togetherness.
After the final buzzer sounded, a handful of Portland players approached their Deering opponents.
“Bring the trophy back,” they told them.
I like to joke that my class bears responsibility — in part — for our school’s state championship drought. Coincidence or not, the Class of 2016 was in eighth grade when the Deering boys’ basketball team captured the school’s most recent state title. Once we got to high school, no team sport reached a state title game, until now.
Much like the 2004 Red Sox — who none of the Deering soccer players watched live because they weren’t yet born — the curse has finally been reversed, no matter what happens in the state championship match.
