Aroostook County foes No. 1 Easton and No. 3 Fort Fairfield played a thrilling back-and-forth Class D North regional championship game on Tuesday night, with the Easton Bears outlasting the Fort Fairfield Tigers 3-2 on Hermon High School’s slick Pottle Field turf.
Energized by the two impassioned fanbases in attendance, Easton and Fort Fairfield’s squads played aggressively all 80 minutes in a game that featured plenty of North-South movement. But it was Easton’s attack — led by their dynamic senior Charles Sweeney — that managed to overwhelm Fort Fairfield first.
In the 25th minute, Sweeney opened the scoring on a beautiful free kick from 35 yards out after drawing the foul to induce the set piece himself. But Sweeney wasn’t done there.
Just five minutes later Easton was pushing forward in transition, with Sweeney leading the charge up the left sideline. The attacking midfielder dribbled the ball from midfield all the way into the Fort Fairfield penalty box, around the last couple Tiger sweepers, and fired the ball past diving goalkeeper Brett Senal to make it 2-0 Bears.
“Oh my gosh, it’s such a great feeling,” Sweeney said. “I have no clue what was going through my head.”
Unfortunately for the Easton faithful, Sweeney’s goals wouldn’t keep them comfortable for long. If the end of the first half was all Easton then the start of the second half was all Fort Fairfield.
Pummeling freshman goalkeeper Jamie Mackay with deep shots and corner kicks for 25 minutes straight, the Tigers forced Mackay to make close to 10 saves in that stretch, and came dangerously close to tying it up.
“Second half, we made some adjustments with our personnel and pressure,” Fort Fairfield head coach John Ala said. “We talked at halftime about settling down and playing confident.”
In the 52nd minute, Fort Fairfield broke through on a scrum in the box, with freshman Levi Cole feeding senior Micah Daigle for a nice tap-in to cut the Bears’ lead in half.
An Easton timeout did nothing to stem the Tiger barrage, with Fort Fairfield proceeding to hit the crossbar on a laser from deep in the 53rd minute, and then coming inches from tying it up in the 65th minute, inducing an Easton goal-line clear.
“It was really challenging,” Mackay said. “The nerves were really high. We had to go back to the basics.”
The Bears finally got some breathing room again in the 67th minute, when junior forward Zachary Pelletier headed in a Sweeney corner kick, and ultimately held on for their first ever state championship berth.
“We’ve talked about this for years — building and building. We knew that if we were going to do it, this was going to be our year,” 15-year Easton head coach Ryan Shaw said. “We’re a small school with eighth-graders and freshmen in the lineup, [but] this group just works so hard. They just love to play.”
Coach Ala had similar words for his Tiger squad that fought hard all the way through to the final seconds.
“They care so much,” Ala said. “I couldn’t have asked for anything more. Truthfully, they have a lot to be proud of.”
In the Class D state championship game this Saturday at Messalonskee High School, Easton will take on the winner of No. 1 Richmond and No. 2 Monmouth Academy from the South.