What a start to the 20th anniversary year for Southern Aroostook High School of Dyer Brook.

After upsetting their way to the title game, the Panthers won their southern Aroostook County school’s first Eastern Maine girls soccer championship with a 4-2 victory over Van Buren on Saturday.

It was 1973 that the towns of Dyer Brook, Oakfield, Merrill, Smyrna, Island Falls and Crystal were consolidated into a new school district. It was 1976 before the students moved into the present facility.

Murray Putnam, the 20-year athletic director who came to the new school from Oakfield, felt from day one that the students willingly accepted consolidation, and proved early on that, no matter where they lived, they would work together to succeed.

That belief may reflect the positive attitude of adults in the area; a sense of caring that merged many into one.

Sports facilities, like soccer fields, were slow in coming to the young people of Southern Aroostook because financial resources weren’t available to get them what they needed at the outset.

But when funds were not available, people were. If fields were to be built, friends and neighbors from the six towns put their collective shoulders to the grindstone and did it themselves.

Before the fields were ready for use in the late 70s, the kids played wherever they could. If that meant kicking a soccer ball around a pasture, or sliding into home plate in the middle of a a hayfield, so be it.

By the mid-80s, a second soccer field was built. This time it was graded. Putnam recalls that a number of co-workers and community members “put in a fair amount of time and free labor” to get that job done.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t always people with youngsters playing sports who contributed their time and talent. “In some cases, there were people who helped simply because they bought into the whole idea of consolidation,” Putnam said.

This most recent championship is one among many in an impressive list of sports accomplishments of which this small school in northern Maine can boast.

Mark it up as regional title No. 13 for Southern Aroostook of Dyer Brook. In 20 years, 21 teams have gone to regional finals. Panther programs have won seven state championships; a statistic Putnam said “speaks quite highly of the youngsters here.”

Southern Aroostook’s newest title is special by virtue of how it came about. Finishing the regular season 9-4-1, the Panthers entered the tournament in fourth place, one of two teams playing a quarterfinal contest in the nine-team division. They did as statistically expected in that game, beating No. 5 Washburn 4-0. Then came perhaps their toughest challenge: top-seeded Ashland.

During the regular season, Southern Aroostook lost once to Ashland and tied the Hornets the second time. The other losses were to Class C Katahdin of Sherman Station, twice, and Hodgdon.

Even though this team is said to be more mature and more experienced than the one that finished 6-7 last year, it was a rookie who helped pull off the upset of the tournament.

Tim Toothaker, the only coach in the 10-year-old girls soccer program, knows sports fans will hear a lot more about freshman Janna Walker.

She scored three goals in the last five minutes of the first half of the Ashland game, then her team held on to upset the Hornets 3-2.

The veteran quartet of senior center halfback Jessica Walker, senior center fullback Holly Slauenwhite, senior wing Jill Mathers and junior striker Janet Corneil led the team into Saturday’s regional final with Van Buren. They looked squarely into the faces of several girls who had eliminated them from the tournament in last year’s quarterfinal. This time, the Panters prevailed with a 4-2 upset of the No. 2 team.

With 22 and 15 goals respectively this season, Corneil and Janna Walker are the scoring threats. Another youngster, sophomore Dianna Goodall, will conclude her first year in goal Saturday in the state championship game with defending state champion Richmond at Brewer.

On Monday, the Southern Aroostook girls started their championship week by practicing inside. Outside, their field was covered by three inches of snow.

Toothaker had the girls concentrate on footwork and passing and dribbling skills. But before the practice was over, he took them outside to see what it would be like to play soccer in the snow.

They found out.

Hit the ball on the ground, and it stops.