MEREDITH - While it's cliché to call football a game of inches, yesterday's Division VI championship game between Winnisquam and Inter-Lakes came down to just that, inches.

On fourth-and-4 with one minute to play, Winnisquam ran one final play in an attempt to extend the game and continue its drive, but after a screen pass to Bears running back Pat Sanborn, the refs spotted the ball on one side of the 40-yard stripe, the first down marker stuck up on the other side. With the turnover on downs, Inter-Lakes was able to take a couple of kneels and run out the clock, earning the school's first ever football championship, 6-0.

Before the game even started, it had the makings of a classic final. Second-seeded Winnisquam came into the match with a 9-1 record, its only loss to the Lakers earlier this season in a 21-14 defeat. Inter-Lakes entered as the top team in the division at 10-0. Both teams play tough-nosed, hit-you-in-the-mouth style defenses, both teams posses a feature back good for at least 20 carries a game with 100 yards, and it was the first championship appearance for both schools.

It would be a final that did not disappoint.

"I think a game like this, if you had to signify a score to indicate these two teams and their character, 6-0 is a good score to indicate that," Inter-Lakes Coach Paul Lavigne said.

For all the back-and-forth play, all the big-time third- and fourth-down conversions, all the fourth-down stops, the winning series came all the way back in the first quarter. On a 14-play, 78-yard drive, the Lakers went headfirst dive after headfirst dive, giving the ball to running back Kevin Brady 10 times for 60 yards of his 33 total carries for 146 yards. The biggest of those runs came on the first play of the second quarter. On third-and-8 from the Winnisquam 9, Brady took the ball straight up the middle, banged off a couple of tackles and came down with an outstretched arm landing in the end zone to give the Lakers the six points they would need to finish off the Bears.

At the time, six points didn't seem like it could possibly be enough to win a championship, especially against a Winnisquam team that boasted the highest scoring offense in the division, outscoring its opponents 309-93 in the regular season. And with a guy like Sanborn, who was coming off a four-touchdown performance in the semifinals against Newfound, if one team was going to outscore the Lakers, it surely would be the Bears.

"Struggling offensive teams, but great defensive teams," Lavigne said about the teams going into the matchup. "Let's face it, we both scored a lot of points all year. We were (number) one, they were two and defensively we were ranked number three and they were ranked number one."

The first half saw some of that struggling offense from the visiting team as a stagnant Winnisquam offense gained only 14 rushing yards during that half and completed just one of five pass attempts for 7 yards and one interception, equating to 21 total yards of offense.

At the onset of the second half, clearly a better Winnisquam team had come to play. Led by Sanborn's 52 yards of his total 102, the Bears took their first drive of the half to the Lakers 9, and elected to go for it on fourth-and-5. The Bears sent quarterback Derick Jenness on a bootleg, found no one to pass to, tried to pick up yards but ended with a 3-yard loss to turn the ball over on downs. Winnisquam never got closer.

Kyle Pratt proved that the Bears had more than one runner in the second half as he totaled 47 rushing yards and helped extend drives on a couple of big third- and fourth-down conversions. Justin Dorr reeled in three catches for 28 yards.

While the tenacious Laker defense was one issue, a large problem for the Bears was field position. Winnisquam started with field position better than its own 28 just once, and that came after a fumble. Six times they started inside their own 20.

"Field position was huge today," Winnisquam Coach Pat Riberdy said. "They kept pinning us deep and every time we got some momentum going it kind of petered out at the end."

The Bears gave themselves the chances they needed, as they were able to force three-and-outs on both Laker series in the fourth quarter. In the end, though, it came down to inches in Inter-Lakes's favor, putting the Lakers into a new fraternity of New Hampshire football. Champions.