MATTHEWS, N.C. — Such records are not kept, but it’s hard to imagine a championship comeback quite like the one Western Alamance pulled off on Saturday at the Mecklenburg County SportsPlex.

Down three goals at halftime, the Warriors scored three in the second half to force overtime and then a fourth in the extra period to take a 4-3 win over Asheboro and claim the N.C. High School Athletic Association 3A boys soccer championship.

“We were down in the score, but we weren’t down and out of the game,” senior Dominic McNerney said.

There are two overlapping reasons why the Warriors (25-1) were able to pull it off. The first is that they were never outplayed as badly as the 3-0 halftime score showed. Asheboro (27-3) left Western Alamance stunned, not because the Blue Comets dominated possession, but they were ruthlessly efficient.

Cam Letterlough scored his 78th of the year, turning and hammering in a ball in the box admist a scrum to make it 1-0 in the 20th. In the 23rd, midfielder Ozmar Martinez took a crack from distance and curled in the game’s second goal.

In the 39th, Diego Bustamante scored similarly to Letterlough’s goal, volleying in a ball that landed in the box from a Juan Macias free kick.

“We went into halftime with a three-goal lead. We came out of halftime over-confident,” Asheboro coach Nick Arroyo said. “I feel like we let one slip through our fingers today.”

Western Alamance wasn’t going to be one-upped that badly for another 40 minutes, and it took just 40 seconds for that to ring true.

In the 41st minute, 40 seconds into the second half, Noah Barrett’s strike found the upper 90 of the net.

The message was sent.

“That first goal just set the tone,” McNerney said.

In the 45th, the Warriors cut the lead to 3-2 as Jerson Hernandez’s free kick was headed in by freshman Grant Bacchus. Barrett added a second as he hammered in a ball during a scrum in the 78th minute to force overtime.

Just two minutes into that, Barrett’s third goal came almost identically to the way his second did. He was named MVP for his hat trick.

“We just knew that (set pieces) were going to be a big part of the game,” Barrett said.

The second reason why the comeback was possible was a hamstring injury suffered by Letterlough early in the second half that took the spirit and deadliness out of Asheboro’s attack.

He tried to play through it, but limped around the field.

The Blue Comets and Warriors had both won 23 matches in a row, and Asheboro was the only team to defeat Western Alamance this season, but it was a different team without the striker, whose 78 goals are fifth all-time in a single season.

“He went out and then everything changed. We scored four goals and I started playing my kind of game,” Western Alamance goalkeeper Eamon Hipps said.

For a half, it was everything Letterlough wanted when he returned to high school soccer for his senior year after he and many others had been given a choice in the matter by their club team. For another half, it was a nightmare that slowly unfolded as the lead whittled away and transformed into a deficit.

But despite the way it ended, he would do it all again.

“It was all worth it,” Letterlough said.

Western Alamance, the second seed from the East, was making its second appearance in the state championship. Asheboro, the top seed from the West, was making its first championship appearance.

Before the game, each team honored its sportsmanship award winner for the season: Seamus McCoy from Western Alamance and Daniel Gutierrez from Asheboro.