“No, never,” East Chapel Hill field hockey coach Susan Taylor said Saturday after her Wildcats completed a perfect season and won their fifth straight North Carolina high school championship. “It’s felt just as great to win it every year.”

Taylor, a former East Chapel Hill player, has been the varsity team’s coach for four years. She was the program’s junior varsity coach a year before that, so she’s been there for each of the last five title games. Saturday’s 3-0 victory over longtime rival Winston-Salem R.J. Reynolds for the championship was as good as it gets, she said.

“I’ve never seen my girls play better – or with more intensity,” Taylor said. “It was awesome.”

East Chapel Hill (19-0) won its ninth state championship in 12 years with Saturday’s shutout in Winston-Salem – the second year in a row that East has blanked the Golden Demons (16-3) in a state final.

Saturday, Sydney Holman assisted on goals by Holly Dew and ninth-grader Caroline Kolk, and then scored the third goal herself. Despite going a player down after a penalty late in the first half, the Wildcats kept Reynolds out of their circle well enough that goalkeeper Grace Hayley needed to save just two shots to preserve East’s second shutout in the N.C. High School Field Hockey Association’s final-four tournament.

East shut out Asheville 4-0 in one of Friday’s semifinals, getting two goals from Dew and one each from Holman and Rebecca Halter. Holman, Halter and Amanda Demasi each assisted on one goal.

“There was some pressure on us, beginning all the way back to August, to keep up the tradition of winning,” Holman said. “Being a senior, it feels really special to know we won it all every (time), and we get to go out with a championship in our last year. With us going 19-0, I feel really proud of what this team accomplished.”

Reynolds (16-3) defeated Carrboro 1-0 in Friday’s other semifinal. Carrboro went on to win third place with a 4-2 decision on strokes Saturday against Asheville. A Maddie Smith goal in the first half tied the game at 1-1. Seniors Kira Castle and Claire Miller led a Carrboro defense that shut down Asheville the rest of the way. In the ensuing shootout, the Jaguars’ Katie Wilson, Alex Grant, Katie Minogue and Maddie Smith all connected on their strokes. Castle stopped two of Asheville’s four strokes to seal the win.

Five Carrboro players and three from Chapel Hill High School joined Holman, Halter, Demasi, Marissa Creatore and Fiona Nelson on the NCHSFHA all-star team announced last week. Carrboro’s Smith, Minogue, Castle, Alex Grant and Tanner Watson were named to the team, along with Becca Heine, Jane Murray and Becca White from CHHS.