Half-a-decade ago, the Cloquet-Esko-Carlton has four players on its junior varsity team and had resorted to buying players equipment in order to have enough skaters to field a JV. 

"We were going to the middle school and asking kids if they knew what hockey was and if they'd be willing to come out," Lumberjacks coach Courtney Olin said on Friday afternoon. 

Fast-forward to 2020, and the Lumberjacks (27-3) have gone from scrapping for players to playing for the Class 1A state championship. 

The champions of Section 7-1A topped defending state runner-up Warroad 5-3 on Friday, powered by a hat trick from senior forward and Bemidji State commit Taylor Nelson and two goals from fellow senior Kiana Bender. 

"We didn't play well enough to win," Warroad coach Dave Marvin said after the loss. "They played better than us, and we know that."

For a stretch, the Warriors outplayed the Lumberjacks, erasing a 2-0 Nelson-fueled deficit with a pair of goals 59 seconds apart in the second frame to send the game into the third tied at 2-2.

Just over a minute into the third, Nelson finished her hat trick, only to have her goal answered eight seconds later by Warroad's Hannah Corneliusen, a Ms. Hockey finalist. 

With momentum seemingly finding the Warriors again as it had in the second, fate played a cruel trick on the girls from Hockeytown, U.S.A, and Cloquet-Esko-Carlton capitalized. 

After failing to clear the puck twice on the penalty skill, Lumberjack forward Kiana Bender let fly a shot from the point. The puck hit the top of the boards, lofted into the air, and came down on the shoulder of Warroad goaltender Kendra Nordick and into the net. 

"That's an NHL bounce," Marvin said with a chuckle. "You don't see that in normal rinks. I mean, what do you do?"

Bender would add a second goal buy tipping in a shot from the blue line, and the Lumberjacks held off a late charge by the Warriors (22-5-2) to earn their spot in the state title game.

Nelson said that the Lumberjacks were prepared for the emotional contest tomorrow. 

"When we go out there, we're going to leave everything out there with our hearts," Nelson said. "No matter win or loss, our season has been the most amazing season we've ever had."