PROVIDENCE — “I just want my father to have one more because it means so much to him,” Dave Belisle said last year after Mount St. Charles lost the third game of the best-of-three state title series.

Last night, the son fulfilled his quest of seeing his father hold the state championship trophy again.

Some people might think that a coach whose teams once won 26 consecutive state titles shouldn’t be too concerned about winning another, especially when that coach is 78 years old.

But then as Dave Belisle said last night about his father, Mount St. Charles head coach Bill Belisle, “People just don’t understand. He’s 78 years old and he’s still out on the ice every day. I just wanted people to say he is the best coach ever, not he was the best coach ever.”

“It’s just so emotional,” Dave Belisle said as he tried to hold back the tears a few minutes after Mount St. Charles had returned to the state high school hockey throne after a four-year absence.

“He’s a proud man with a proud family. I just wanted him to have one more. I just wanted him to cherish the moment where he could step on the ice one more time.”

It is the most unique father-son relationship Rhode Island sports has ever seen.

Twenty-nine years ago, when he was only a college sophomore, Dave Belisle became his father’s assistant coach. He had been there at his father’s father side ever since — through the time in 1983 when Bill Belisle almost died from a head injury suffered at a Mount practice, through 25 of the 26 consecutive years run as state champion and for the past four years when the Mount hasn’t been champion.

Years ago, Bill Belisle started saying, “It’s Dave’s team now.” And there was no question Dave ran the bench during Mount games and set the agenda for Mount practices. But Bill Belisle still was on the ice every day, often when Dave couldn’t be there because of his full-time job that isn’t associated with Mount St. Charles.

Some assistant coaches, even some sons, who played such a major role in a team’s success may have grown tired of the father also getting the fame as the coach of one of America’s best-known high school hockey teams, but not Dave Belisle.

Through the years, Dave has always referred to the Mount teams as “my father’s team.”

That’s why this year became so important to the son and to a new generation of Mount St. Charles hockey players. The reality is, you don’t know how much longer a 78-year-old man can stay involved with a high school sports team, not to mention put on a pair of skates every day.

From the outset of this season, it was obvious this was a Mount St. Charles team that could enable the son to see his father celebrate one more championship. It was a team that was undefeated against Interscholastic League competition during the regular season and a team that beat both Catholic Memorial and Hamden High, two teams that were the top-ranked teams in Massachusetts and Connecticut, respectively, at the time they played the Mount.

It was a team that had great skating speed, good defense and as Dave Belisle had said several times during the season, “A team that wants to win it for my father.”

It was new generation of Mount St. Charles players. Nobody on the team had been a member of a state championship team, yet they still understood what a 78-year-old was talking about when he preached Mount Pride.

Before last night’s game, the players told Bill Belisle they were dedicating the game to him.

“I was speechless,” Bill Belisle said about the dedication. “Usually I’m not speechless, but I was dumbfounded.”

They then went out and captured the title by staging one of the best comebacks any of the Mount championship teams have ever staged. After all, how many of the Mount state champions were behind 2-0 after just over three minutes of play.

“They played their hearts out,” Dave Belisle said of the Mounties’ performance.

“I was afraid I was going to disappoint him (his father), but they (the team) came through”.

And so did the son.

jgillool@projo.com