There are 12 underclassmen listed on Lewiston High School’s 23-man roster this season.
The Blue Devils have just four seniors.
Compared to most teams in the state, they are young. But the Blue Devils (8-4-1) aren’t using that as an excuse, especially since their younger players are coming into their own as the season hits the home stretch.
“They’re a skilled group,” Lewiston coach Jamie Belleau said. “They’re a fast group. They have some skating ability. They have some skills. They came in with a lot of expectations in terms of their skating and skills. Certainly that brings them a long way to get them into the fold and help assimilate them to the higher level, but it’s been a work in progress for them to get used to the speed of the game, the physical aspects of the game. It’s been a work in progress, but they’ve taken a lot of constructive criticism to heart, they’ve listened, they’ve been focused and they continue to work.”
The underclassmen have been responsible for 43.1 percent of the scoring output so far this season. Sophomore forward Jeromey Rancourt is tied for the team lead with nine goals and leads all underclassmen with 16 points. Rancourt has seven goals in his past four games, including a hat trick against two-time defending state champion Falmouth.
“It’s a tradition and you want to make them proud, so you definitely give it your all all the time,” Rancourt said. “It gives you an extra boost of energy to want to play at the highest level you can.”
Rancourt is not the only underclassman contributing. Six others have recorded at least two points. Five underclassmen have at least eight points.
Lewiston has yet to play a game where the underclassmen don’t contribute to the offense. In each game, Lewiston’s younger players have recorded at least two points. The Blue Devils’ freshmen and sophomores have scored at least one goal in every game but two — and they’ve lost both: a 5-4 loss to Falmouth and a 5-2 loss to St. Dominic Academy.
The underclassmen’s biggest scoring output came in a 9-2 victory against Cony in which they contributing six goals and seven assists. Jean-Luc Dostie, Cole Ouellette, Alex Rivet, Joe Bisson and Dustin Larochelle had multi-point nights.
“Coming into this season we knew we were going to be young,” Lewiston junior captain Kyle Morin said. “We knew each kid was going to have to step up his game whether you were a junior or whether you were a freshman. I think it’s been a great improvement since day of tryouts to what we are now. We have kids who are stepping in, playing positions they haven’t necessarily played and they’re responding well to it. It’s good to see.”
The underclassmen are contributing in more than just the offensive zone as they have two sophomores and one freshman playing the blue line as well as sophomore Jacob Strout in net. Strout pitched Lewiston’s lone shutout of the season against Scarborough, making 16 saves in a 3-0 victory.
“When you come off a stretch of our schedule and you look at our team — we beat Scarborough, we beat Bangor, we beat Falmouth, we beat Biddeford — everybody’s going to say everybody’s coming together,” Belleau said. “We’re playing well right now. The key in part to playing well is being consistent and staying focused. Whenever you have some success it puts an added stress and an added challenge on your execution, your focus and your consistency.”
The upperclassmen play a part in making sure their younger teammates stay focused. Players like Morin, Joey Frechette, Griffin Wade and Kyle Ullrich were once younger, less-experienced members of the Blue Devils and know it’s easy to stay focused when things are going right. Their job is to make sure that focus is there when things go awry.
“We keep them motivated and show them what they’re really playing for,” Morin said. “Beating the good teams we’ve played the past couple weeks, it shows them what the excitement is in high school hockey and that it’s the real deal and you have to be ready for what comes at you.”
Rancourt said the upperclassmen help make the transition to high school hockey much easier.
“It’s been a great experience,” Rancourt said. “The upperclassmen have definitely made us feel like a family. It’s not one of those environments where you feel scared. They make you feel at home and it makes playing here so much easier.”
The leadership of the upperclassmen help the underclassmen adapt to more than just Xs and Os, but all that playing hockey for Lewiston represents. Whether they try to put Lewiston’s history in the back of their minds, it’s hard not to think about it when the banner listing its 20 state titles literally hangs over their head at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee. They see it every day at practice and every time during home games.
Shielding the younger players from that added pressure is difficult to do.
“Part of playing here, part of playing for Lewiston High School, part of playing our schedule we have is to have to deal with the expectations that get set,” Belleau said. “It’s the expectations that come from a lot of different places, it comes from the community, it comes from history, it comes from tradition, but it also comes from ourselves. We set a certain expectation for our hockey program regardless of who we have on our team, regardless of what year, regardless of the number of younger players, regardless of the number of senior players. I don’t think we can shield them from that expectation and that’s part of the expectation that they embrace. The question is how they deal with that as they play the type of the schedule we play and that’s part of the learning process.”
The Blue Devils have five regular season games remaining on the schedule before shifting gears for the playoffs. They currently sit at No. 2 in the East.
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