Protect the football is a key mission Sabers coach Robin Bowkett wants his team to accomplish in Saturday's Division II final vs. Pelham. (Telegraph file photo by TOM KING)

AMHERST – The code is a simple one: “Charlie Mike.”

“If the mission’s not finished, we just say ‘Charlie Mike’,” Souhegan High School football coach Robin Bowkett said. “That’s code for ‘Continue the mission.’ When things are going bad, adversity strikes, what do we do now? It’s Charlie Mike, let’s go.”

The mission is a simple one: Make Saturday’s Division II title game vs. Pelham be the second and final stop on a Saber Revenge Tour.

Souhegan avenged one of its only two losses on the season last weekend in beating top seed Plymouth in the Division II semifinals.

And now the No. 4, 9-2 Sabers get a crack at taking care of the other loss, set to face No. 2 Pelham (10-1) in Saturday’s championship game at 1 p.m. at Pinkerton Academy in Derry.

“It’s hard to beat a good team twice,” Bowkett said earlier this week. “I think we’ll do what we can, have a great week of practice and give ’em hell on Saturday.”

This will be Souhegan’s third title game in the last five years. The Sabers beat Plymouth in 2020, but lost 34-6 to the Pythons in the division II finals two years ago. The Sabers lost 40-26 to the Pythons at home just about a month ago.

Pelham, which saw its 47-game win streak come to an end at the hands of Trinity during the regular season, avenged that loss with a resounding semifinal win and will be seeking the program’s fifth straight championship. The first two were won in Division III.

This is a Souhegan team that not many were looking at as a title contender, not after the departure of perhaps the division’s two best offense players, back J.J. Bright and QB Romy Jain.

But they’ve been remade offensively under junior QB Michael Fiengo, a runner who can also hit the big passes to players like Brayden Hickman and Brody Smith, plus the running of Ryland Raudelunas. They were 6-0 until they ran smack into a gauntlet of Plymouth-Pelham back-to-back.

Pelham is coached by former longtime Souhegan assistant Justin Hufft (an alum), who came in as the school’s AD this summer but had to take the football reins when John Trisciani abruptly resigned a couple of days before the start of the season after being hired in late May. It didn’t seem to impact them one bit as Hufft certainly is a well-respected championship coach, having guided Goffstown to the Division I crown in 2015.

Souhegan goes into this with plenty of confidence.

“Our kids definitely enjoyed (the semis win) as they should have,” Bowkett said. “I think we started getting some momentum on defense and you started to feel it on the sidelines. … It was almost the exact reversal from last year.

“Certainly after the (first) Pelham game, we felt like we could beat them. We turned the ball over, couldn’t stop the run, we didn’t run the ball effectively, but our kids came out of that feeling like ‘We can go with these guys.'”

The game may be up to the Saber defense, led by the likes of linebacker Grant Harris and tackle Luis Toledo, among others. The Pythons offense starts with the highly acclaimed back Junior MacKinnon.

“He’s always a horse back there, he’s always going to fall forward for positive yards,” Bowkett said. “I think (Justin) Bowlan can score anytime he touches the ball, and same for (Nathan Migliore).”

Pelham may not be as big as Plymouth but still might have a size edge on the Sabers. “They’re still big and physical,” Bowkett said.

What led to the result the first time?

“Going into the game looking back on it, it was a perfect storm of them losing the week before to Trinity,” Bowkett said. “They got that out of the way, and they were ready to rock the next week.

“And then us losing an overtime game the week before to Plymouth, going toe-to-toe and then boom, have to do it right away (again).

“And then during the game, their offensive line just controlled the game. They took advantage of some of our angles or poor angles, and kind of just wore us out.”

Pelham also had two non-offensive TDs, a kick return by Bowlan and an interception return by Migiliore. That pick six thwarted what looked like a sure Saber scoring drive just before the half, so it was a 14-point swing.

“I think that was a big part of that game,” Bowkett said. “We struggled to run the ball that day, we did have success running the ball, but it’s hard to be one-dimensional.”

So the Sabers will have to counteract that again.

“If we execute a little bit better,” Bowkett said. “It always comes down to fundamentals in November, we’ve been harping it since the start of the playoffs. Be fundamentally sound, protect the football, and do all those things. We’ll make our tweaks that we have to.”

You get the picture: the Pythons seem to have the perfect combination of size and speed – much faster than Plymouth, who the Sabers routed last weekend.

But the Sabers just have the confidence that they will make the big plays when they have to.

“They just keep believing, no matter what,” Bowkett said. “They come out to practice every day, they want to be the best for themselves every day. They have fun, we’re playing music, they’re getting after it, they’re just a joy to be around.

“They love playing for each other. They’ll go 48 minutes for each other.”

It’s “Charlie Mike” now, but they hope mission accomplished on Saturday.