MANCHESTER – Padge Mac Seain knew how to react when his infield completed a game-ending double play Saturday night at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium.

After all, as a freshman, he had watched from the dugout as Bow High School walked off with a state title triumph over his Hollis Brookline team.

So Mac Seain, now a senior ace pitcher, flung his glove up in the air on the mound and led the state championship celebration with his Cavalier teammates as they pounded out nine hits en route to a 7-2 Division II title win over No. 2 St. Thomas of Dover.

It’s HB’s fourth title and first since 2007.

“After freshman year, seeing that team lose on that walk-off, I think this year, I didn’t expect a championship run, but I knew we were going to go deep, but I expected nothing less,” Mac Seain said. “We realized we weren’t going to win every game, just take them one at a time.”

Saturday night it was one hit at a time. They broke open a 1-1 game in the third with three runs, and then put up three more in the fourth to grab a 7-1 lead. It was basically over.

“This team can’t through this order too many times without somebody getting hot,” HB coach Jay Sartell said. “This is a good offensive team. We put our best offensive team out there, and supplemented it with good defense at the end. That was the game plan coming in – plate a couple, and hold the lead.

“Timely hits. If you can grind out those games in the middle of the year, win by one run, leave the tying run at third, those types of games give your team some grit.”

“They have a great offensive team,” St. Thomas coach Carson Cross said, his team ending up 16-5. “The game’s going to come down to some two-out knocks and some big-time hits. They happened to string them all together in that third and fourth inning. … They hit the ball well tonight, nine hits, that’s a lot in a championship game.”

With two on and one out in the bottom of the third against St.Thomas lefty starter Connor Toriello, Alex Razzaboni hit a double over every Saint’s head in left field to plate the go ahead run. That was followed by an RBI double by Zack Lussier, and if that wasn’t enough,Charlie Hale boomed a triple to the wall that drove in Lussier to make it 4-1. Razzaboni had an RBI single in the first as well.

“My approach was middle away, but if I got an inside pitch, I turned on it,”

Razzaboni said.

“He’s a boss,” Sartell said of his catcher. “A junior who has the great mindset that he has, he’s a good pitch-caller, a good captain. I don’t have to visit (the mound) much, they know what we’re doing.”

Hale had three RBIs on the night, the third coming on a two-run single off Saints reliever Sam Grondin, that after Paul Vachon had been hit by a pitch to force in a run with the bases juiced.

All that made Mac Seain that much tougher on the mound. He allowed just four hits, gave up two unearned runs, struck out 10, walked two and plunked two others. The Saints got that unearned run in the second to tie it, and scratched out another in the sixth on a single, wild pitch, and throwing error.

But nothing fazed the senior pitcher who was also the Division II Player of the Year.

Hollis Brookline’s Padge Mac Seain delivers a pitch during the Cavaliers’ 7-2 state title win Saturday night in Manchester. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

“Padge is incredible,” Cross said. “We knew he was going to fill up the zone, but he had the adrenalin cooking, especially after they took that lead.

“We were starting to get to him a little bit, having some good at-bats, but you could see that little cushion of a lead surged some adrenalin into him. He was able to find a second life, a really good ball game from him.”

“I had confidence beforehand,” Mac Seain said. “But after getting that lead, it really gave me the confidence to pitch my outs and trust my guys on the field. … For any pitcher, a lead gives them the utmost confidence.”

“What I’ve been saying the whole time is we’re keeping both hands on the wheel and our big foot on the gas,” Sartell said. “Only difference was, I asked him (before the game), do you want it in center field or do you want it here (on the mound). He said ‘I want it here.’ So spin one up. Just like we planned.”

And he did. Sartell has others he could have one with, feeling he had four good starters. Pitching and timely hitting was the difference for the Cavs all season.

“I think even after today our ERA is one run,” Sartell said. “If we get two runs, we win baseball games. And that was the story of the season all the way along.”

On this night, good hitting beat good pitching. The combination of Toriello and Grondin had kept Souhegan scoreless in the semis, but the Cavalier hitters weren’t going to be denied.

“That’s what we’re here for,” Razzaboni said. “That’s why we’re state champs.”