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ORONO — Derek Soule couldn’t believe it — not that the Greely baseball team had reached the mountaintop, but the way it happened.

The starting pitcher for the Rangers? James Saxe, who had thrown just one inning of varsity baseball. The situation the Rangers faced late in the game? Trailing by four runs and down to their last strike. Yet for the second game in a row, Greely showed its resilience, and the result was a stunning triumph.

Greely rode a five-run seventh-inning rally to a 6-5 victory over Ellsworth in the Class B championship game Saturday at the University of Maine’s Mahaney Diamond. The win marked the first state title in 10 years for the Rangers, who used patience, big hits and an opportunistic play on the basepaths to pull off an unlikely comeback.

“We just kept climbing and kept climbing the whole game,” said Soule, Greely’s longtime coach. “It’s still hard to believe it happened. To score five runs, all with two outs, it’s amazing. … The challenges we overcame, I mean, what can you say? It’s an unbelievably resilient group.”

Kyle Soule, the coach’s nephew, had three hits for Greely (17-3), including a single that drove in Owen Piesik and Ben Kyles to tie the game.

That left runners on first and second, and Sawyer Boudle pinch ran for Soule, who went to warm up in the bullpen.

Both runners tried to advance on a passed ball, but Wes Piper slipped on his way to third. Boudle, meanwhile, was caught in a rundown between first and second, but the freshman avoided being tagged out long enough for Piper to race all the way home.

“I saw him stumble, and all I was thinking was, ‘Keep the play alive,’” Boudle said. “I knew that if I could just keep running and not let them get me for a while, he was probably going to score, and he did.”

After Brayden King (6 2/3 innings, seven strikeouts) struck out a pair in the first inning, Ellsworth (14-6) took a 1-0 lead as Dawson Curtis followed a pair of leadoff infield hits with an RBI single. The Eagles then went up 3-0 in the third, as Curtis doubled in Ridge Weatherbee and Hunter Boles.

After scoreless fourth and fifth innings, Greely clawed a run back in the top of the sixth as Soule singled home Kyles with two outs. But Ellsworth got a leadoff hit from Hollis Grindal in the bottom half and eventually scored when Jackson Barry ripped a single to left, giving the Eagles a 5-1 lead.

With two outs and a runner on third in the seventh, Dawson Curtis relieved King, who reached his pitch limit. After two walks, a single and an error, Soule’s hit tied the game — and then a play that began as a base-running miscue produced the winning run.

“That was not the plan, and I wish I could tell you differently, but once he got in a rundown, I immediately sent Wes knowing that he could run, and if he could score, that run was going to count,” Derek Soule said. “(Sawyer) stayed in it as long as he could to allow Wes to score.”

Ellsworth threatened in the bottom of the seventh, as Curtis (two doubles, single) hit his second double of the game with two outs. But Sylas Almy (five strikeouts in 3 1/3 innings) got Hollis Grindal to ground out to short, sealing the comeback victory.

For Ellsworth, the loss was a reversal of fortune from the regional tournament. In the North semifinals, the Eagles trailed 2-0 before scoring 11 runs in the sixth to win 11-2. Then in the regional final, they came back from a 5-0 deficit against Hermon, earning an 8-5 win.

Kyle Soule’s tying hit came four days after he hit a walk-off double to lift Greely past Fryeburg Academy in the South title game. It was the latest chapter in a redemption story for Soule, who was the losing pitcher when Yarmouth mounted a comeback to beat the Rangers for the regional title last year.

“I had confidence in myself,” Kyle Soule said. “I’ve worked so hard all year — this whole team has, too — and I just knew I was going to get a hit for my team.”

Soule also had the responsibility of making the winning out at first base on Grindal’s ground ball. What followed? A celebration fitting of an epic comeback, as the sophomore spiked the ball and mobbed his teammates on the mound.

“I’m never going to forget that moment ever in my life,” Soule said. “I knew we were going to win, and it just feels so good to do it.”