It resulted in the first national championship for the school from Rockland, Massachusetts, in just the program’s third season of existence.

“I’m just so proud of this group,” Caitrin Lonergan, head coach for Lovell Academy, said. “In the locker room in between periods [before the third], I really expressed that the next goal was so important. I said, ‘I think if we score the next one, we’re going to win this game.’”

Lovell trailed 3-1 entering the third period. It was Mirella Martinelli — playing her last game at Lovell — who made her coach’s words prophetic. Martinelli, who scored a power-play goal in the first period, scored another with the skater advantage just 2:39 into the third to pull Lovell within one. Another penalty just over a minute later paved the way for Marinelli’s power-play hat trick 3:56 into the third to tie the game.

“To be honest, I don’t really care,” Martinelli said of her hat trick. “I just worry about my team’s success. I just happened to score.”

Brooklyn O’Brien, Isabella Naruki-Chew and Nikita Danchuk scored for Shattuck-St. Mary’s. Peyton Scott stopped 21 shots for Lovell and Dana Rigan made 28 saves for Shattuck.

Martinelli’s unselfish attitude is one of the trademarks of the players in the young Lovell program. And her coming through at a time when her team needed her the most is something she won’t forget.

“It means everything,” Martinelli said. “I love these people so much. They’re my family.”

That is part of what Longergan is building at Lovell. A lot of attention is given to the three players who played for the U.S. at the 2025 IIHF Under-18 Women’s World Championship in Vantaa, Finland, in January. But the team is more than Chyna Taylor, Sydney Stoughton and Annabelle Lovell, a trio of talented 15-year-old sophomores.

“[Everyone is] just so talented,” Longergan said. “The program, just every day, they come ready to work and they’re all so competitive and they all want to be the best. When you have a bunch of kids around each other in practice that work that hard, everyone around you gets better. So just credit to all the girls. They’re just such a great group of kids, too, and they really want the whole team to succeed. I’m just really fortunate to coach these types of athletes.”

The longer-term success is built when players such as Martinelli and Canty come through in big games, building confidence in the rest of the roster while still knowing the big names are there.

“Julia has been our leading scorer in our 19s for three years now and she’s just a player that knows how to play under pressure,” Lonergan said. “She’s so calm, she’s always the first person we choose in shootouts. So to see her get the winning goal, that’s not surprising to us.”

“It goes to show that we’re deeper than just who everyone talks about,” Canty said. “We have depth and that really shows how hard everyone works and how hard all four lines work. No matter what the given situation is, everyone’s always ready to go out there, put on their best performance, whether they get one shift or they play the whole game. Everyone just going out there doing their job, trying to get the job done and we did it.”

This whole season has seen Lovell accomplish things ahead of the timeline Lonergan envisioned.

“It’s incredible,” Lonergan said. “This is the experience we wanted to be in when all these kids came to Lovell. We talked about our goal of winning a national championship. So to see us doing it in three years ... they created history.”

Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.