AUGUSTA — With 30 seconds left and her team leading 10-9, Maranacook/Winthrop freshman goalie Willow Woodford faced one final shot by Lincoln Academy.

Woodward stopped Yzze Bhe’s bid to tie the game, sending the Black Bears to the Class C girls lacrosse state championship.

“That girl’s a freshman, Willow is a freshman, and we swap (goalies) quarter to quarter,” Maranacook coach Zach Stewart said. “For those girls to come in and just ball every quarter, and then to just give a fist pump to the next girl coming in, and for them to be the team that they are, it’s just an amazing thing.”

The Black Bears (12-4) will face Traip Academy (11-5) in the state championship game Friday in Portland, after the Rangers defeated No. 1 seed Wells (13-3) in triple overtime, 8-7.

Maranacook/Winthrop (12-4) opened a 5-2 lead in the first quarter and maintained its advantage until Lincoln (11-5) briefly pulled even in the fourth quarter. Stella Stewart led the way for the Black Bears with two goals and three assists. She was one of five players to find the back of the net for Maranacook/Winthrop and credited the team’s offensive movement and spread for its victory.

“I would say making sure to look for that open player (worked for us), because on our team, there’s no one shooter, we have so many shooters,” Stewart said. “I think what worked well for me is always looking for that opportunity, because I knew that my players would be open.”

Lincoln coach Mic Lebel said the Eagles (11-5) had the opposite issue, with Mariam DeLisle scoring six of the Eagles’ nine goals, and secondary shooters missing shots on goal.

“It would have been nice to get a little more secondary scoring, we did have a lot of shots, but the other players just didn’t hit the net,” Lebel said. “We missed the net a few times early on, it was pretty even, we were behind by four goals, but I think we even had more shots than they did, so it comes down to that execution.”

Lebel noted that the Eagles have lacked scoring to complement DeLisle on a consistent basis.

“It was a great game, I don’t have any regrets, really, as far as what we tried to do or what anybody did on the field,” Lebel said. “We played a good sportsmanship game and a great mental approach to the game, and they handled that pretty well, as you can see, but it’s tough. We’ve worked four years to build it up to this point, so it comes down (to) secondary scoring.”

In the first quarter, Eve Araskin tallied two goals, Mya St. Pierre got one of her two goals, and Cooper Davis and Stella Stewart each added a goal for Maranacook/Winthrop.

DeLisle scored three of her six goals in the first half. Samantha Kopp and Coffin both tallied one goal in the first half for Lincoln, and Scarlett O’Brien scored in the third quarter.

Lincoln placed 16 shots on goal compared to Maranacook’s 15, but Woodford and Devyn Eliasen made enough saves to keep the Black Bears in front for most of the contest.

Celia Bergdahl added a goal for Maranacook in the third quarter, and Alice Farran scored her second of the game to break a 9-9 tie with 8:08 remaining in the game.

“Having the 6-3 (score in the second quarter) and kind of climbing from there, we let them back in the game and that made it tough for us,” Zach Stewart said. “The whole second half, we’ve talked about these things all season long and we’ve had a couple of dips where we tried to do things individually. We can do things individually against teams that don’t have a certain skill set, but we cannot do that in the championship setting. Lincoln did a really good job of playing like a champion, so we had to act as a team.”

Stewart added that the Black Bears’ strategy against DeLisle was to put midfield/defender Cooper Davis on her in hopes of stopping her from shooting, or forcing her to her left hand.

“It didn’t seem like she was even trying to pass, so we just kept sending doubles, triples, whatever, and just kept sending the whole house,” Zach Stewart said. “Like the (Bill) Belichick saying, ‘cut the head off the snake,’ let’s not let (DeLisle) shoot with her right hand, so she scores with the left hand, and we’ll do something different.”