Skowhegan field hockey coach Paula Doughty talks to a player during a practice this season. Doughty’s program won 22 consecutive regional finals before a loss to Brewer in the Class A North final last week. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

Think of everything that happens in 23 years. Everything changes. Fortunes rise, fall and rise again. Twenty-three years is a generation.

In 2001, the Skowhegan Area High School field hockey team won the Eastern Class A championship. The team won again in 2002, then again in 2003, and so on, right through 2023.

Only the pandemic interrupted the incredible run, because the 2020 state tournament wasn’t played.

Last week, that run of 22 straight regional titles came to an end when Brewer beat Skowhegan 3-0 in the Class A North championship game. Skowhegan won 17 state championships during this stretch.

Sooner or later, streaks end. This one began years before every member of this season’s Skowhegan field hockey team was born. It hurts. Longtime head coach Paula Doughty sees her young team through a veteran teacher’s eyes. She sees a team that improved as the season progressed, a team that should be proud of all it accomplished.

“No team ever worked harder than the team we had this year,” she said.

Streaks grow, until they stop abruptly. Always abruptly, it seems. The Dirigo girls’ basketball team won 11 straight regional titles between 1995 and 2005, until one day, they didn’t. The Bangor baseball team won five consecutive state championships from 2014 through 2018. It dominated the diamond, until it didn’t. The Noble wrestling team won eight straight state titles, but there wasn’t a ninth. The Waynflete boys’ tennis team has won 16 straight Class C championships. That streak will end, too, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Doughty’s perspective is rooted in time and experience, things teenagers have in short supply. Doughty’s players are dealing with the pain that comes with being there when the streak stops.

Mark Gaudet can relate better than most.

Twenty years ago, Gaudet was the senior point guard for the Valley boys’ basketball team. Gaudet took the final shot of the 2004 Class D championship game, a 3-point try from the top of the key, a shot that was practically his signature. He front-rimmed it, and Calvary Chapel escaped the Augusta Civic Center that Saturday afternoon with a 72-69 win.

That loss snapped Valley’s run of six consecutive state championships – a basketball state record.

Skowhegan field hockey coach Paula Doughty has led one of the most dominant programs in Maine history, regardless of sport. Morning Sentinel file photo

Gaudet went on to play four seasons of basketball at Colby College. Now a major in the U.S. Army, Gaudet is in his 16th year in the service. He doesn’t think about that game a lot, but he does think about it.

“I can still remember most of that game clearly, 20 years later. All the what ifs,” Gaudet said in a phone interview Monday.

Thanks to the idiosyncrasies of life at a small school, Gaudet had a 1-on-1 study hall with his basketball coach, Dwight Littlefield, that entire senior year. Often, they’d look back at the previous game and develop a scouting report for the next opponent. After that state final loss, they went over those what ifs.

What if the Cavaliers had played stall ball with the lead in the fourth quarter? What if they had done something else against the box-and-1 defense Calvary Chapel used to try to slow Gaudet, one of the top players in the state that season? Stall ball was never Valley’s style under Littlefield. So they kept playing, with no regrets 20 years later.

“We chose to ride the momentum,” Gaudet said. “Twenty years later, I’d still make the same decision. They just played better than us down the stretch.”

Now 38, Gaudet said it was a relief the streak ended with his team. He knows they were mentally tough enough to handle it. They gave the returning team a clean slate, and after pressing that reset button, Valley went back to the state championship game for an eighth straight season.

Gaudet remembers how the support his team received from all of Bingham didn’t end with that loss. If anything, it grew at a time the team needed it. He hopes that is what’s happening in Skowhegan now.

“Twenty years later, you can appreciate it’s bigger than one game,” Gaudet said. “The team never dwelled on it. We knew we accomplished something special.”

Gaudet was in awe of Skowhegan’s accomplishment. When he graduated from Valley in 2004, a short drive up Route 201 from Skowhegan, the streak was just three seasons old. Now he’s 38 with a great career and a family. Think of everything that happens in 23 years.

“It’s unbelievable to sustain it that long,” Gaudet said. “Six years, what we did, was impressive. Twenty is, that’s incredible.”

Doughty says her team will realize the magnitude of what it accomplished, if it doesn’t already. Streaks end. Tradition remains.

“My kids have true grit,” Doughty said. “Skowhegan’s not going in the hopper.”