LEWISTON — Ron Dumont toed the line between cocky and confident, walking a tightrope over a chasm few coaches dare approach.
“You have to decide what position you’re going to take with your team,” Dumont said. “The last thing I wanted to do was waver back and forth. Then they get a mixed message, ‘Are we really good? Are we not?’ So I put it out there.”
From the season’s first practice, Dumont told his Lewiston High School girls’ hockey team it was good enough to earn the program’s second state title in seven seasons.
The Blue Devils had reasons to expect success.
An All-State goaltender: Paige Fontaine fits the bill. She and freshman understudy Meagan Gosselin allowed 18 goals in 21 games this season.
Solid defense: The team boasts four blueliners who can pivot, skate and shoot as well or better than anyone else in Maine girls’ high school hockey.
Scoring punch: Two of Maine’s top scoring forwards from a year ago melded this season with a talented group of freshmen and sophomores, most of whom have skated at elite camps and for All-Star teams through their young careers. Lewiston racked up 110 goals on the campaign.
“As far as across the board skill, I told them, ‘You’re the best skilled team I’ve ever coached,'” Dumont said.
Sounds bombastic for a program that has sent four teams to state finals in the past seven seasons.
Still, “it’s a quiet confidence,” he told them. “You can’t be complacent, I don’t want you cocky. That’s not mouthin’, that’s not tweeting ‘Yah yah yah,’ or whatever. You come, you do your job every day, you respect the other teams and you try to put a ‘W’ on the board every game.”
And even then, assembling ingredients that taste great on their own does not always create a gourmet meal. Doing so requires a master chef to blend it all together.
To that end, Dumont may well be Maine girls’ ice hockey’s Iron Chef.
“It’s challenging, and I have to look at what I have,” Dumont said. “Last year, I had to sell Erica (Lemieux). I said, ‘I know you’re a forward, but for us to get to a state championship game, I need you on defense.’ That worked out. Why? Not so much me, but that she bought into it.”
Perhaps a season ahead of schedule, Dumont’s group reached the state final in 2014, losing to an unbeaten Scarborough squad.
“I just don’t think we were ready,” Dumont admitted.
Think of it as the appetizer course, particularly for those players from that team who returned to the big stage Saturday.
Among them were six seniors, three juniors, five sophomores and four freshmen.
Aged accoutrements blending with fresh flavor, spending all season marinating on their coaches’ belief that a state title was theirs to lose.
“Every team is different,” Dumont said. “This team in particular, I just think they needed to know right up front. Sometimes it’s hard for them, dealing with the pressure.”
Enter the sous chefs.
Brittane (Michaud) Edgerton and Scott Laberge have played that role perfectly, blending into the background, working with sets of players individually and helping them make the transition to varsity hockey.
“You start with Scott, who’s a volunteer parent,” Dumont said. “He’s coached a lot of youth hockey, he knows these kids, he’s known them for years. They come in here, I’m just meeting them, and he’s known them for years.”
Call Laberge the prep cook.
“(Edgerton)’s just been tremendous,” Dumont said. “Like all the women coaches we’ve had before, she has college hockey experience. That’s invaluable, not so much in what they can teach skill-wise, but the mental part of the game. They’ve been through these things, having to play under adversity, with a target on your back or from behind.”
Edgerton, then, is the line cook.
For three months the staff nurtured its team, reminding its members not only of the ultimate goal, but of the work involved in reaching it.
“I knew, looking at the schedule, there were a handful of games we were going to dominate in,” Dumont said. “The whole message has been, we need to work through those game, and every game we play, there’s a purpose to it. And pretty much the whole season, they came ready and prepared to play.”
Saturday’s state championship served as the garnish on the Devils’ season. Something toward which the team had worked in unison came to fruition, guided by the deft hand of the master chef himself.
Now, for dessert?
“I was kidding earlier, we’ve had no issues at all with these kids, no drama, they all get along, and it was that way all year,” Dumont said, “but it’s been the most stressful year ever for us, because of the expectation that you’re supposed to win. I’m going to miss these kids, but I need a rest.”
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