FARMINGTON — Jody Harmon has spent the past five years enthusiastically rebuilding the Mt. Blue field hockey team and trying to put the Cougars on equal footing with their opponents.

The cement foundation that Harmon painstakingly constructed has cured.

Harmon and the Cougars shook off the past and handily beat the Messalonskee Eagles, 4-2, on Tuesday.

Messalonskee has been a perennial powerhouse and Harmon has not witnessed her team beat the Eagles since she began coaching five years ago.

“That is finally over,” Harmon said emphatically. “Done! Done! They have worked so hard — and everyone always told me it is going to take at least five years to rebuild the team.

“So this is our fifth year and we are doing it. We are done. We worked really hard and it is all starting to all come together.”

Hannah Minns helped things along with her second hat trick of the season. She scored three goals in a row and used her tricky reverse stick shot to score two of them.

“It is awesome,” Harmon said. “She has worked really hard in practices and took a lot of extra time to get where she is at.”

“They came out strong, but we knew we had to come out stronger,” Minns said. “This a huge deal. First time in my school career that we beat them. We came in knowing we really wanted it and finally got it.

“That has been my strongest shot. Started practicing at middle school — just kept doing it over and over again. I am very confident in my reverse shot.”

Minns’ confidence level was high at the outset of the game.

She scored her first one on a Molly Harmon feed at 10:42. Minns popped in her second goal when Rebecca Harmon set her up, giving the Cougars the 2-0 lead in the first half.

Not to be outdone, Lydia Dexter scored for the Eagles. Autumn Littlefield was credited with the assist.

In the second half, both teams kept pressing.

Minns was there on the scene in front of the Messalonskee net and drove it past goalie Hannah Pinney, with Leah St. Laurent earning the assist on the play.

But it was Adelle Foss’s turn to score for the Cougars. She scored on a Hannah LeClaire feed, making it 4-1.

But the Eagles didn’t call it quits and Littlefield scored on a line-drive shot.

“We need to work harder. Mt. Blue outworked us by far today,” Messalonskee coach Katie McLaughlin said. “And you can’t always win with finesse.

“I got to hand this one over to Mt. Blue. They outplayed us. Great win for them. We have to step back, reevaluate what we are doing here.”