BANGOR – As he stood and listened to the awards ceremony after Friday night’s Pine Tree Conference championship game, Bangor senior Justin Schmersal grimaced, and a few stray tears streaked down his cheeks.

Was Schmersal crying because of the leg trouble that has plagued him? Was it a shaky first half that saw him and the Bangor secondary get burned by Skowhegan quarterback B.J. Dunlap? Was it just that the Rams won their second straight PTC title?

No, the flanker-cornerback said (a bit unconvincingly), it wasn’t the leg. And his individual effort hadn’t moved him to tears.

Instead, it was Bangor’s completion of the biggest comeback of its season, a 49-21 victory over Skowhegan that propelled Bangor into the Class A state football game for the second straight year.

“I’m not hurt,” Schmersal said. “I’m very happy. We came out [of halftime] and we performed. We played from the heart.”

The second half of Friday’s game at Cameron Stadium was a triumph for the Rams, their defensive secondary, and for Schmersal, who picked off two passes and scored the touchdown that iced it for Bangor.

Schmersal couldn’t have picked a better time to start grabbing Skowhegan passes. The Rams had already started to build their second-half rally, down 21-14 after a Buddy Nickerson TD run.

Skowhegan’s Jason Bird killed some of the momentum with a good kickoff return, but Schmersal got his first interception with 4:58 left. The Indians took the ball right back when Chris Bombardier threw an interception, but Schmersal leapt for another 1:45 later.

The Skowhegan turnover set up Bangor’s game-tying drive that culminated in Bombardier’s TD pass to Derrick Shain.

It was all Bangor from there.

“They were going to score,” said Bangor head coach Mark Hackett. “They were absolutely going to score, if it wasn’t already iced. Then we got those two big picks and away we went. It bought us enough time to regroup to do what we did.”

Schmersal said the secondary wasn’t thinking about its first-half mistakes – which included giving up two Dunlap touchdown passes and the quarterback’s 8-for-19, 110-yard passing effort – and only about how to get back into the game.

“There was no redemption needed,” he said. “We just did like we knew how. Everybody in the secondary picked up their man and we did what needed to do. The ball came to me. If it went to Zak Ray, he picks it off. If it went to Chris Bombardier, he would have picked it off. If it went to Mike Prentiss, he would have picked it off. If it went to Evan Martzial, he would have picked it off. It’s all a team effort.”

The Rams had a 27-21 advantage when Schmersal broke loose on a counter play thanks to a big hole created by the offensive line for a 58-yard touchdown run.

“His play was unbelievable. I think he loves football as much or more as anyone I’ve met,” Hackett said. “… [At halftime] he said, ‘Don’t worry coach, we’re not going to lose this game.’ He played possessed. He didn’t make all the right moves, but he made close to [all of] them. He was almost perfect.”

Schmersal finished with three rushes for 70 yards and two catches for 15 yards. And defensively, Dunlap was 1-for-6 passing in the second half.

And Schmersal did it all on a leg that seemed to get worse as the game wore on. At one point in the fourth quarter he needed help from Ram tackle Conor Stephens to get up from the field, and he winced as he toured the postgame crowd, accepting hugs from the fans and the game ball from Hackett.

“My leg is fine, my ankle’s fine, my head is fine, my arm is fine,” said Schmersal, with as much of a smile as he could muster.