What a Swiss Army knife is to the Boy Scouts of America, Trisha Ripton is to the sport of basketball.

Like the multi-purpose camping gadget, Ripton does so many different things – she scores, she rebounds, she passes, she plays defense, she can hit the three, she can post up – it is almost impossible to believe it all comes wrapped up in a 5-foot-9 junior guard’s body.

Stearns High School of Millinocket believes. After Ripton’s 22-point, seven-steal, six-assist, four-blocked shot, and four-rebound performance in Thursday night’s Eastern Maine Class A schoolgirl semifinal at the Bangor Auditorium, so do the Cony Rams.

The final: Stearns 61, Cony 54, sending the Minutemen into their second straight regional title game.

Stearns, ranked second at 18-2, will face Lawrence of Fairfield, a 54-49 winner over Old Town Tursday night. Third-ranked Cony of Augusta winds up 17-3.

In a matchup pitting Stearns’ size against Cony’s quickness, Ripton was the difference.

Ripton did a little bit of everything in the game, hitting a 3-pointer with 53 seconds left in the first half to put Stearns ahead for good, before posting up for a majority of the second half to help control the inside game down the stretch.

The only thing which did stop Ripton was a high, but errant elbow by a Cony player during rebounding action with 6:14 left in the game. Ripton left the game, but only for 12 seconds.

“It’s good that we have Trisha because she gets us pumped,” said Stearns’ Beth Mott, who added nine points, 10 rebounds, four assists, and four steals. “When she starts playing well, we start playing well. She’s got such good court awareness that when Trisha’s on the court, we’ve got to expect anything.”

The first three quarters saw five lead changes and seven ties.

Two Kelly Reeves free throws gave Stearns a 49-41 lead in the first minute of the last quarter.

Cony stormed back, however, with a 3-pointer from the wing by Anna Nadeau (18 points, eight rebounds) and bucket down low from Chrisanne Burns, cutting the Stearns advantage to 49-46 with 6:14 left.

Ripton then found Melissa Leino (12 rebounds) for a hoop down low before Mott tallied a conventional 3-point play, lifting the Minutemen to a 54-46 lead with 4:43 left.

Cony got no closer than seven the rest of the way.

Stopping Cony’s quicker guards was the key to the game,” according to Ripton.

“We watched them on tape and we knew they could hit the three pointers,” said Ripton. “We spread our defense a bit and when they drove the lane, we just got help from the help side.”

For Cony, Burns added 10 points and 14 rebounds while Tammy Masselli had seven points and 11 rebounds. Sarah Fenderson dished out six assists.

The tradition-rich Rams, who played in three state championship games over the last five seasons, played tough defense early while holding the explosive Minutemen to just 10-for-40 (25 percent) first-half shooting.

Cony, however, was equally cold in the first half, hitting just eight of 28 shots (29 percent) from the floor and missing seven shots from the free throw line as Stearns held a 28-27 lead at the break.

After grabbing an 8-2 to open the game, Cony watched Stearns come back to tie the game at 10 after the first quarter.

After Sarah Marshall’s post-up hoop (from Ripton), Cony ran off six straight points – two free throws by Burns and two buckets by Nadeau – to take a 16-12 lead.

As was the case for most of the game, however, Ripton and Stearns did not allow the Rams to pull away, staying close enough to pull away with its own fourth quarter run.

Minutemen 61, Rams 54

Stearns girls Cony

Name AG G AF F TP Name AG G AF F TP

McLean 4 2 2 1 5 Fenderson 7 1 9 4 6

Santerre 8 2 2 1 5 Duffy 2 1 0 0 2

Leino 8 4 0 0 8 Masselli 8 3 4 1 7

Ripton 27 8 9 5 22 Nadeau 17 5 9 7 18

Marshall 8 2 0 0 4 Farrell 13 3 0 0 8

Mott 11 2 7 5 9 Burns 8 4 4 2 10

Reeves 6 2 4 4 8 Beaudoin 0 0 0 0 0

Totals 72 22 24 16 61 Totals 57 18 28 15 54

Stearns 10 28 45 61

Cony 10 27 41 54

Preliminary:

3-pt. goals: Stearns (1-4): Ripton 1-4; Cony (3-17): Fenderson 0-3, Masselli 0-1, Nadeau 1-2, Farrell 2-11