BATH – They may have gone into the playoffs as the eighth seed among Western Maine Class C teams, but the Traip Academy Rangers have played like champions since the regular season ended.

Saturday afternoon was no exception as the Rangers capped an improbable playoff run with a dominating 5-1 victory over Piscataquis of Guilford despite playing shorthanded for 50 of the game’s 80 minutes.

“They were playing a man down, but it was like they were playing a man up,” said PCHS coach Rex Webb, whose Pirates finished 12-5-1. “We had more effective chances when we were playing 11-on-11 than we did when it was 11-10.”

After heading into halftime with the score tied 1-1 and one player tossed out of the game due to a red card for an intentional hand ball – which also gave the Pirates a game-tying penalty kick – the Rangers regrouped.

“We knew that PK wasn’t going to come back to hurt us. We can come back from anything,” said Trevor Higgins, a junior who scored the first goal on a hard shot from the center of the 18 off Tom Roots’ deflection of an errant shot. “We’ve done it before and we did it again.”

Higgins was referring to:

. A quarterfinal game against top-ranked and unbeaten Telstar of Bethel that had to be moved from Bethel to Hebron due to a snow-covered field,

. Having no home playoff games, and

. Having to beat a team in the West final that swept Traip in the regular season.

“We certainly did things the hard way all though the playoffs and the way this game was,” said Traip coach Paul Marquis, whose Rangers wound up 14-5.

Once again, junior captain Tyler Metevier was the catalyst for the Rangers with three goals – all in the second half.

“We lost in the quarterfinals last year and we thought about that a lot. This year we went in as a low seed, but we had confidence in ourselves to make this kind of run,” Metevier said. “When we knew we had to play with 10, we knew we had to step it up a little.”

Metevier got things rolling with a goal 2 minutes, 6 seconds into the second half. He poked a feed from Higgins high into the left side of the net.

“We talked about being down one man and practicing with 10 men before,” Higgins said. “We just calmed down, and after we got that first goal in the second half, that really helped us.”

Just 1:26 later, Metevier helped again, this time on a hard kick from 30 yards out to the far left side. Pirates goalie Ryan Martell was caught on the right side and had no chance to deflect it.

The third score came with 24:21 left on another hard shot, this one from the 18 off a nudge pass from Jack Masury, to the left corner, again catching Martell on the opposite end.

The last goal came 1:16 later from Higgins, who headed a redirected pass from Masury past Ryan Birse and low into the left corner of the net by a lunging Martell.

The scoring barrage took PCHS out of the game and led to Traip’s 16-7 shots advantage.

“He must have had a way better halftime speech than I did,” Webb joked, referring to Traip’s Marquis.

Traip goalie Connor Kuehl made six saves before Jay Cuttle entered with 1:15 left.

Martell wound up with all nine PCHS saves. Edsel Brown came in with eight minutes left.