STANDISH — Seemingly every player on each team had been unable to come through with the clutch hit.

Down to his team’s last strike, Yarmouth High junior second baseman Alec Gagnon finally broke through, lashing a two-run triple over Greely center fielder Jackson Leding’s head in the top of the seventh inning for the winning hit in the Clippers’ 2-1 Class B South regional final victory over their longtime rival Tuesday at St. Joseph’s College

“I was just focused on coming through for my guys. I don’t even remember what happened,” said Gagnon, who started the year as a utility player on a squad with 11 seniors.

What had happened was that in a game where the teams combined to leave 24 runners on base, Sam Lowenstein of Yarmouth singled and Jack Janczuk drew a walk to put two runners on and finish Greely starting pitcher Sam Almy’s day because he had reached the 110-pitch limit.

Greely went to freshman Kyle Soule, who struck out Sam Bradford for the second out, then got Gagnon to a 2-2 count.

“I got a fastball upper on the outside and just focused on driving it up the middle,” Gagnon said.

Initially the ball appeared catchable, but then just kept carrying to the deepest part of Larry Mahaney Diamond. Lowenstein and Janczuk scored easily, and Gagnon slid headfirst into third where he was soon in a bear hug with Coach Marc Halstead.

“You start the season with 11 seniors and you think this Alec Gagnon will be a nice utility player batting ninth,” Halstead said. “He ends up batting sixth in the Southern Maine championship game. Two-two count, doesn’t look good. He’s got a lot of grit, though, a lot of grit.”

Gagnon started at second base in part because he leads Yarmouth in on-base percentage and partly because senior Matt Gautreau, the former starter, has a shoulder injury.

Yarmouth senior reliever Andrew Cheever, who got out of a bases-loaded, no-out situation when he came on in the sixth, secured the final three outs for the win.

Yarmouth (15-4) advanced to the state final against Caribou (12-7) at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the University of Southern Maine. The Clippers, who lost 1-0 to Old Town in last season’s final, are looking for their first state championship since beating Old Town in 2017.

Greely finished 16-3 with all three losses to Yarmouth, each by a single run. Over the past two seasons Yarmouth has beaten Greely six straight times, including in the 2023 regional semifinal.

“We were one strike away. It was a great game,” said Greely Coach Derek Soule. “It’s unfortunate to be on the losing end of it but you look at the game on the whole, they made some errors but they made some huge plays.”

Both starters – Lowenstein for Yarmouth (five-plus innigs) and Almy – continually worked out of jams.

When Cheever entered in the sixth, he was thrust into another one.

Cheever got two outs on his first pitch, turning a comeback grounder by Greely leadoff hitter Wyatt Soucie into a 1-2-3 double play. After intentionally walking Marky Axelsen to reload the bases, Cheever struck out Ryder Simpson.

Before the intentional walk, Yarmouth assistant coach Brian Robinson came out and reminded Cheever to heed the words of Gibson Harnett, the star pitcher on Yarmouth’s 2017 championship team who died early in 2024 after a lengthy battle with cancer.

“We talked about his love for the game and his saying ‘Time to Compete,’ and he put that on me. He told me it was time to compete,” Cheever said.

Both teams left 12 runners on but it was Greely that seemed to have the best chances, starting in the first when it scored its only run – unearned – and still had the bases loaded with no outs. The Rangers also had the bases loaded with one out in the third. Jackson Leding was thrown out at the plate twice, once when Bradford threw him out after Leding was waved home from second base on a shallow single to center and then in an attempted run-down play in the fourth, with Cheever throwing him out by several steps.

“With one run, I never thought that was going to be enough,” Derek Soule said. “Just couldn’t get those insurance runs.”