It was mission accomplished this season for the Hollis Brookline girls soccer team with a dominant unbeaten season and Division II state title. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

In the next couple of weeks, nashuatelegraph.com will occasionally take a look at some of the highlights/key events of the fall season. Today, Hollis Brookline’s Division II girls soccer title.

How’d they do it? Simple: They were on a mission from the start of the season.

It was really the only way to approach things for the Hollis Brookline High School girls soccer team. The Cavaliers had lost in the semifinals in sudden death overtime two straight years, were mad as heck and weren’t going to take it any more, basically.

Revenge tour?

“A redemption tour,” Hollis Brookline coach Peter Clarke said. “For my juniors year, it was our third straight trip into the Final Four, and it just hadn’t been happening. It was redemption.”

The Cavaliers can consider themselves redeemed, step by step. The first step was to soar through a 16-0 regular season, bulldozing most if not all teams in their way, outscoring them by an amazing total of 86-3. Second, they cruised in the quarterfinals. Third, and most important, they got over that semifinal hurdle by beating Bow in penalty kicks after 110 minutes of scoreless soccer, including 30 minutes of – yes, again – sudden death overtime.

And finally, the tour ended with mission accomplished: a 2-1 hard-fought championship win last Sunday night over No. 3 Coe-Brown. It’s HB’s first girls soccer title since 2002.

This was a 19-0 season to remember, all mapped out by the Cavaliers from the first day of full practice in August.

“It was that we knew were playing good soccer, two years in a row,” Clarke said. “We even played the better game in one of them, arguably. But you still can lose a game in a fair fashion, it can go against you, obviously, with a couple of great players (on the opposition).

“So what we decided to do is we decided we had to work on every tiny aspect of our game, and find that little margin somewhere that on a night like tonight would make the difference on a given play.

“There was some little unidentified thing missing, but by going over every detail and staying with our game plan and trying to figure out what our strengths are in different scenarios, just make a difference in everything – whether it was attitude, work rate, touch, attacking mentality, etc., and the girls did it.

“We didn’t know what the answer would be but knew if we knew we’d just get a little better at everything. …We learned over two years we had to be that little bit better. I can’t identify what it is now, but we had to be a little bit better at everything.”

It’s hard to believe they could be better. They trailed just twice all season – once to rival Milford, down 1-0 in a late season game before beating the Spartans 5-1. Then 1-0 five minutes into the finals vs. the Bears on a corner kick that was headed in as Cavs keeper Maya Blackman had moved out to try to knock away the kick but it sailed over everyone into the box.

But Rosalie DeSantis, a sophomore striker, got two goals, one in the final six minutes of the first half and the other just over seven minutes into the second, and the Cavs captured the title that had eluded them for the last few years.

Clarke knew that his team was the one everyone was focused on, a heavy favorite. Did that put more pressure on them?

“We talked about that before the game,” Clarke said. “The semifinals, you feel more pressure, because if you lose in the semis, you don’t even make it here, and you don’t get recognized for a great season and everybody forgets. So at least when we got here, the pressure is a little different.

“We talked about the 2007 Patriots a few weeks ago. You can be the premier team in a division, but you can still step up and lose one game when somebody throws a really good game at you. It almost happened to us here with the penalty kicks (vs. Bow in the semis).”

Hollis all year was paced by junior striker Makenna Maguire, last year’s Telegraph Player of the Year. Maguire was even more of a force this season, and helped set up the go-ahead goal.

But if you want real drama, go back three days prior to the finals when, as temperatures were dipping into the low 40s, freshman keeper Blackman made two lunging penalty kick saves to put the Cavs, who took care of things on offense with three penalty kick goals as the tense session went just four rounds.

Blackman was kind of in the background most of the season because there wasn’t a ton of work thanks to a solid Cavalier defense. While busy in the Bow semi, she only had to make a couple of saves in the finals because the Cav defenders didn’t let the Bears get many shots off. Just as they did to most teams during the regular season, thanks to the defense in front of her led by Ellie Snoke and Cassidy Engle. Thanks to its defense, HB was only the third team this season to keep Coe-Brown to just one goal.

“Those two are the best tandem center backs we’ve ever had, they work so well together,” Clarke said. “Ellie’s the leader and Cassidy’s the young buck.”

“A few years ago, I knew when these juniors were freshmen that they were going to be that good,” Clarke said. “Frankly that year we surprised ourselves and came up against Bow in the semifinals and lost and played out of our minds. It was that moment that I knew this program could become something special.”

But Clarke knew that this particular team could handle just about anything in that late season game at Milford.

“On their (the Spartans’) senior night, when they scored first in a very emotional setting, and we simply shrugged, absorbed everything the ybroguth, and responded with our now classic game style, and rolled up a strong win,” Clarke said. “That’s when Ashley (assistant coach Hein) and I knew that this group had what it takes, and could win a championship.”

“They’re disciplined,” Coe-Brown coach Josh Hils said. “They don’t panic when they’re playing. They stick with what they do well. They know their identity. That’s the biggest thing Peter’s been able to put on the program.”

The Cavs have a new identity now, changing it from contenders to champions.