Galvanized by an infusion of youth, the Boothbay Region High School girls’ soccer team is headed to the playoffs for the first time since 2002.

With their fiery competitiveness, the Lady Seahawks surprised a lot of people around the Mountain Valley Conference this season, perhaps even including their own first-year coach Ben Powell.

“I wasn't sure what to expect coming in,” Powell said. “I knew the program had been struggling, and there was even talk about discontinuing soccer altogether. Having played soccer my entire life, I didn't want to see that happen and was excited for the opportunity to coach. What I lacked in experience I felt that I could make up for with my enthusiasm and passion for the game. My goal for the year was to ignite that same enthusiasm in my players.”

His players responded immediately by exploding for six goals in the season opening win at Dirigo, and that set the stage for a key early-season matchup against MVC favorite Lisbon.

Powell devised a strategy to shut down Lisbon’s prolific scorer Deliah Schreiber by assigning freshman Hannah Cola the tall task of marking Schreiber the entire game, and it worked. The resulting 3-2 upset victory served notice to the rest of the conference that Boothbay’s young team had come of age.

“After those two games,” Coach Powell said, “the team began to realize that we could definitely compete in the MVC.”

“Most of our team is made up of underclassmen,” said Lisa Pawlowski, a co-captain and one of only two seniors on the squad. “They really stepped up and were able to take on great responsibilities.”

An endearing quality of this year’s team is the players’ unselfish willingness to play wherever the team needs them the most.

“It can be a little stressful moving around,” admitted Cola, who has played all over the field, including goalkeeper. “But I’ll play midfield or wherever. I just want to win.”

Cola’s twin sister Reagan is another prime example. She maneuvered through the entire Dirigo team to score a highlight reel goal in the season opener, but has also been invaluable helping to anchor a strong defense.

“Reagan Cola has done a phenomenal job,” said fellow defender ReAnna Heino. “She has saved us so many times. I’m proud of all our freshmen and how they’ve stepped up. It’s made a big difference.”

Freshman Ella Spear, whose father Lester has literally spearheaded the region’s Midcoast United soccer program for several years, was another of the team’s best all-around players. Her older brother, Camden, an accomplished player himself, spent a great deal of time this season with the goalkeepers and helped maintain the team’s positive atmosphere.

In the second half of the season, after the secret was out that Boothbay was for real, the team had to endure an extremely tough stretch of games. Every game seemed to be against a perennial playoff powerhouse.

“Playing Hall Dale, Madison, Mt. Valley, Monmouth, and Oak Hill right in a row was pretty brutal,” admitted Powell. “Those are some of the best teams in the MVC and they were able to take advantage of our youth and inexperience, as well as our lack of depth. I thought the team handled it very well, though.”

The players credited their coach with keeping things in perspective.

“Mr. Powell is really nice and we’ve all really connected with him,” said Colette Bertin, a junior defender. “He wasn’t too hard on us during that stretch, just emphasizing practicing and getting better.”

“I believe we grew a lot as a team,” said Powell said. “We’re inexperienced and lost three one-goal games which could have easily gone the other way. But we've worked hard throughout the year and have made significant improvements on some of our weaknesses, including moving as a team, using space, and passing with purpose. The girls are now starting to understand the game much better, and when we make a mistake they can often tell me what they should have done in that situation instead.”

Eight different players scored goals this season, and all are scheduled to return next year.

“We have a lot of potential in the next few years,” Powell said. “I'm really looking forward to next year as we will have a great mix of senior leadership (Bertin and Angie Perkins), juniors who will start to really come into their own (Summer Chamberlin, Evy Case, Lovely Uberita, Jackie McLoon, and Heino), and a great class of sophomores who will only get stronger (Helen Hamblett, Olivia Paolillo, Spear, and the Cola twins). This is a great core group and I think we could easily double our win total next year and possibly get a playoff win.”

But unlike previous years, this season isn’t quite over yet. Boothbay (3-10-1) ended up the 11th and final seed in the Southern Maine Class C playoffs. The team will travel to Portland Friday to face Waynflete, which recently won back-to-back state championships in 2012 and 2013.

“We have a very tough draw,” Powell said. “But we’ll give them our best shot.”

“We’re not like some other teams that make the playoffs all the time,” Heino said. “We’ve worked hard for this and want to go in playing as hard as we can. It’s a great group of girls. We’re really a team, like a family. I can see great potential for Boothbay soccer and next year should be an even bigger year for us.”