Cole Lockhart was sitting on the bench as the final seconds ticked off the game clock. He looked to his coach behind him, at his teammates seated alongside, and he recognized the early seeds of a postgame celebration being planted.

With a win over the Ashburn Xtreme in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Monday, the Maine Moose won their second consecutive USA Hockey 18U 2A national junior championship. It was one of two national championships for the Maine Moose this week, with the 14U team also winning a national title by coming out on top of a 16-team field in Amherst, New York, also on Monday.

Lockhart, who recently completed his high school career for Cony/Hall-Dale/Monmouth, was on the 16U team a year ago and watched as the 18Us won the first national championship in the age group for the Moose.

“It was really amazing,” Lockhart said. “It’s been a dream of mine to win a national championship, and I’m happy just to have been a part of it.”

The Moose took an interesting path to their second consecutive championship. They had to beat the Fort Wayne, Indiana, team they played for the national title in 2017 early in the tournament, played the other Maine entrant in the 12-team field — the Casco Bay Mariners — in the national semifinals and beat Eastern Junior Elite Prospects League (EJEPL) playoff foe Ashburn (Washington, D.C.) in the finals.

A number of players on this Moose team also played on the national title team in 2017, including former Waterville standout Jackson Aldrich and former Cony star Cam Wilson. Aldrich and Wilson were teammates at Kents Hill this winter.

“It felt like a different tournament, like there was a different dynamic this time,” Wilson said of having new faces on the team this time around. “But I don’t think there was ever a time when we doubted we could win a national championship,”

Wilson scored twice in the national championship game.

“We had three (playoff-round) games against teams that we had past history with,” Wilson said. “We hate losing to those teams. It really came down to the fact that we weren’t going to lose to them.”

After an exceptional early part of the season, the Moose split — as they usually do — for the bulk of the high school season. They reconvened prior to the national tournament and needed a few games to hit their collective stride, according to head coach Jeff Ross.

But Ross liked the character in his group, character which showed in the form of an early 3-1 deficit against Casco in the semifinals and after twice allowing Ashburn to tie the title game.

“It was quite a tough road for us, but it was one that meant a lot with the history we had with some of those teams,” Ross said. “One thing with this group, they’ve got a real refuse-to-lose attitude.”

“We really weren’t with each other for a lot of the season,” Lockhart added. “But when it came to nationals, for a lot of us, it’s our last tournament. For some of us, it’s our last hockey. That really brought us together.”

The 14U Maine Moose enjoyed a dominant run to the organization’s first 14U national championship. They outscored the opposition 10-3 in three games during the playoff rounds, winning the national title 4-0 over the Gulf Coast Flames from Tampa Bay, Florida.

Trevor Ouellette of Biddeford had two goals and an assist in the championship game, while Clifton’s Josh Girard made 24 saves to post the shutout.

The Maine Moose 16Us, which won the Maine Amateur Hockey Association state championship to earn their spot in the national tournament, went 4-1 in Wayne, New Jersey, losing in the national semifinals to the Atlanta Fire.

With two national championship teams from Maine and two more national semifinalists, the week was a statement for Pine Tree State hockey.

“It says a lot about the quality of hockey in Maine,” Ross said. “We have kids from six or seven high schools, and (Casco Bay) as a great team with great coaches and a lot of talent, as do we. I think high school hockey in the state has thinned out in the last 10 years or so, but you can see from these Maine teams and the success we had that the quality of players is still there.”

Travis Barrett — 621-5621

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Twitter: @TBarrettGWC