Led by a group of seniors that tasted defeated just twice in four seasons, the Dimond Lynx reaffirmed their greatness Friday by claiming their third straight Cook Inlet Conference flag football championship.
Dimond outlasted the Service Cougars 6-0 in a defensive struggle at Service High. The game was a matchup of the CIC's top two teams -- both were 15-1 coming into the game -- and it was the first meeting between the teams since Service snapped Dimond's 42-game winning streak with a 20-6 win four weeks ago.
The loss put Dimond's 14 seniors in foreign territory -- their only previous setback had come when they were freshmen on the C team and lost to Chugiak.
Two of those seniors teamed up for the game's only touchdown. Lauren Hines took a counter pass from Nikki Forrey and ran seven yards to cap a drive of about 60 yards that came on Dimond's first possession.
"I knew if I caught that ball, it was gonna set the mood for the whole game," Hines said. "Nikki made a perfect pass and I caught it on my outside. There was a (Service) girl right behind me the whole time."
Hines caught a 17-yard pass from Forrey earlier in the drive, but maybe her biggest contribution came before the game even started. Less than 20 minutes before kickoff, the Lynx gathered to hear a speech from their co-captain.
"She read this letter she had written," Dimond coach Kathleen Navarre said, "and she said we were all caught up in the streak and that our record is 0-0 against Service tonight and we're putting everything behind us."
Hines said she gets nervous when she has to speak in public but felt compelled to say something.
"I knew me and the other captain had to hype the team up," she said. "I couldn't sleep the night before, so I jotted down some ideas and wrote a speech and I read it to them. I said we could either go out there and give it all we've got, or (face) the other outcome."
Though Dimond's early lead held up, the Cougars never allowed the Lynx to let down their guard.
On the their final possession, with about a minute or two remaining, a receiver dropped a pass from CIC Offensive Player of the Year Julia Miknich that would have put the Cougars on Dimond's five-yard line. Service coach Jason Caldarera said from his perspective on the sideline it looked like a catch and a fumble, but the officials ruled it an incomplete pass.
"We had a couple other deep passes where we dropped the ball," he said. "It was a great defensive effort on both sides. We just couldn't convert some of our long passes."
The championship was Dimond's third straight and fifth in six seasons. Service, which split two regular-season games with the Lynx, was playing for the title for just the second time. In 2007, the second season of flag football in Anchorage, Service fell 33-7 to Chugiak in the title game.
Friday's finale featured two of the three players who shared CIC Defensive Player of the Year honors -- Dimond's Neno Martinez and Service's Zoe Bailey.
Martinez, a co-captain with Hines, had four pulls to help Dimond earn the shut out. Tiffany Jackson and Celina Abello each added six pulls, Shemeah Keslia-Lewis intercepted a pass and Taylor Starr-Enyard, who moved up from the JV team to the varsity team for the playoffs, had four pulls, two of them for losses.
Offensively, Jackson rushed for 87 yards on 17 carries and Forrey rushed for 53 yards on 14 carries while completing five of nine passes.
Like Dimond, Service is a senior-laden team that will lose 16 players to graduation. But Miknich and some other key players will be back, "and we have some really talented kids coming up," Caldarera said. "We'll be all right."
Dimond should be OK too -- Navarre said 14 seniors is the fewest she's ever had. Flag football is enormously popular at Dimond, which fielded three C teams this season to accommodate 95 girls who came out for the sport.
Hines, Forrey and Martinez are among several of Dimond's seniors who got their start as C team players four years ago.
"They lost two games their whole careers," Navarre said. "Not many can say that."
Cook Inlet Conference flag football champions
2014 -- Dimond 6, Service 0
2013 -- Dimond 33, South 7
2012 -- Dimond 14, West 6
2011 -- East 13, West 12 (OT)
2010 -- Dimond 21, East 15
2009 -- Dimond 32, Bartlett 12
2008 -- Chugiak 13, Bartlett 6
2007 -- Chugiak 33, Service 7
2006 -- Bartlett 19, Chugiak 18