PORTLAND, Maine — The 509th and final win of Rick Clark’s 34-year coaching career surely was one of the most dramatic.
Clark’s York High School girls basketball team capped off an unbeaten season Saturday afternoon, outlasting defending champion Lawrence of Fairfield 58-57 in a battle of unbeatens for the Class A state title at the Cross Insurance Arena.
“I told the girls at the start it would be a nice storybook ending,” said Clark, who announced last summer that he would retire from coaching after this season. “Fairy tales don’t always end the way you want them to, but this one did.”
That fairy tale ending did not come without ultimate struggle, as a game that featured eight lead changes in its opening five minutes alone came down to the final seconds.
Senior forward Chloe Smedley, who scored a game-high 23 points on 10-of-14 shooting from the field, hit a jumper from the left elbow to give York a 56-55 lead with 59 seconds remaining.
The Wildcats got the ball back after a Lawrence turnover, and after a timeout they worked time off the clock along the perimeter before Lilian Posternak spotted Miss Basketball finalist Shannon Todd alone under the basket.
Todd, held to six points in the game, converted the layup to make it a three-point game with 19 seconds left.
Lawrence’s Camryn Caldwell missed a 3-point try, but Bulldogs’ Miss Basketball finalist Nia Irving grabbed the offensive rebound and missed once before scoring to cut the gap to one just before the buzzer sounded.
“It was one of those games, they hit a three and we hit a two,” said Lawrence coach John Donato. “You couldn’t have asked for a better-played game on both sides.”
Mia Briggs added nine points, eight rebounds and four assists for York, which won its first state title since winning the Class B crown in 2010. Madigan Cogger also scored nine points, including a key 3-pointer that helped the Wildcats erase a four-point deficit midway through the final period.
Senior guard Dominique Lewis led Lawrence with 19 points while Irving, who sat out a stretch of 7 minutes, 51 seconds midway through the second half after drawing her third and fourth fouls within a 13-second span, finished with 14 points and 11 rebounds.
But even when Irving was on the court, Lawrence struggled to get her the ball in position to score as York used Todd, Smedley and Briggs to plug up the interior passing lanes, initially with a player-to-player defense but later with a 2-3 zone after Todd and Smedley got into foul trouble.
Irving managed just eight field-goal attempts in the game while shooting 2 of 5 from the line.
“We made some mistakes feeding the post, that was the big thing,” said Donato. “I think that was because the stage was big and we’re young and not used to it.”
This game may have been the first state final in Maine high school basketball history featuring two coaches with more than 500 career victories in Donato (535 wins entering the contest) and Clark (508).
But it wasn’t the first time they had matched wits on the sidelines. Donato’s Houlton team defeated York 52-43 in the 1986 Class B girls state final.
York (22-0) trailed 20-12 after a 3-pointer by Lawrence’s Morgan Boudreau in the opening seconds of the second quarter but rallied for a 32-30 halftime edge on a last-second jumper by Cogger.
York moved out to a 39-32 lead just after Irving went to the bench with four fouls early in the third period, but Lewis scored seven points as Lawrence (21-1) outscored the Wildcats 16-5 over the next six minutes to take a 48-44 lead into the fourth quarter.
“I knew we could do it,” said Smedley. “I knew if we stayed positive and had trust in our team we could pull this off and we did.”
