When Warwick Co-op senior captain Madison Balutowski was a sophomore, the team began its chant of “Why not us?”

They won the state title that year. They kept it going last year, and won the DeCosta championship. This season, after their 3-0 victory on Friday over Barrington/Mt. Hope/Portsmouth Co-op to send them back to the state championship series, the locker room erupted with “Why not us?”

If it’s going to be No. 4-seeded Warwick on top again, it’ll need Balutowski’s red-hot stick to do it. Balutowski has two hat tricks this postseason, scoring 10 of Warwick’s 14 goals thus far.

“Honestly, I’m always out on the ice early, every day, just working on my shot, ’cause I always want to give my team the best effort I can,” Balutowski said with a smile. “I’ve taken my shot so far in the four years that it just feels amazing that I contribute this much right now.”

She has also made history during this team’s playoff run. She entered the semifinals against top-seeded Barrington two goals shy of tying the all-time record for goals scored in four years, which stood at 108.

Balutowski netted a hat trick in the first game of the series, tying and breaking the mark on the same night. She added insurance in Game 2, opening and closing the scoring while assisting on the other goal in between. She now has 111 heading into the championship round.

“I have friends and family that have been on me all week because they knew that I was going out, trying to beat the state record, [I] ended up doing it [Friday] so they want me to go out higher and try to push that record higher,” Balutowski said.

Since she shifted back from defense to forward on senior night, a game which Warwick won 3-1, Balutowski scored twice in that game and has had multiple goals in every contest since the second switch.

“Senior night, we had a few girls out sick, so coach just decided he was gonna mess the lines up a little bit, try to play three [defensemen],” Balutowski said. “Two [defensemen] were sick and sucked it up to play. Coach decided to put me back on forward to fill in for the few girls that were sick and ended up getting two goals that night and he just wanted to keep it going.”

The Lady Titans opened the playoffs against No. 5 Cumberland/Lincoln/Mount St. Charles on March 3, just six days after a 7-2 loss to the same squad at Adelard Arena. Warwick took the first game, 4-0, and Balutowski scored twice in that game. That was just the start of her torrid playoff pace.

In Game 2, Balutowski recorded her first hat trick of the postseason, capped off by an overtime game-winner to send Warwick into the semis.

The task didn’t get any easier for Warwick, as Barrington, which had gone 3-0-1 against the Lady Titans during the regular season, was the favorite coming into the series with a 15-2-2 overall record. The underdog mentality isn’t anything new, though, according to Balutowski.

“We’ve always thought of ourselves as the underdog,” she said. “We knew that this season, the top six teams, the only thing separating us was will and determination. I think a lot of the bad bounces went against us all season, and now that they’re starting to go our way I think it’s helping us so much. “

Warwick did what it couldn’t do during the regular season, and it did so twice. Balutowski tallied three goals to help quiet Barrington in Game 1, while factoring into all three scores in the second game as well.

She fired a shot into the twine 30 seconds into Game 2, setting the tone for Warwick.

“Going out there, trying to score early, it was definitely a key thing because we knew if we could score early on them they might fall back ’cause in previous games when they scored early they kind of panicked and it worked to that team’s advantage so we knew it would work to our advantage if we scored early,” Balutowski said.

Balutowski assisted on the second goal after her shot ricocheted out to Kelsey Holmes to give Warwick a cushion six minutes in. The state’s leading goal scorer effectively put the game out of reach with a coast-to-coast backhander nine minutes into the second period.

“Madison’s greatest strength is her desire,” Warwick assistant coach Tom McCormick said. “It’s not so much her skill, it’s her want factor. I’ve seen her build herself into one heck of a player these past four years. Her freshman year, she was not this player, and she slowly developed a desire and a skill set to go with it, and that’s why she’s the player she is.”

Balutowski’s playoff success is nothing new, as she has been a part of championship teams before. However, that experience has fueled her to play at another level this time around.

“We look back and we always talk about how we probably have the most playoff experience out of all the teams going in right now, and it’s just helping us because we know what it takes to get to that level,” Balutowski said. “We know what it’s like to be the first public school to win the title. So it helps that we’ve had that experience going in.”

The Lady Titans are waiting to find out their finals opponent as the No. 3 Narragansett/North Kingstown/South Kingstown Storm Co-op was scheduled to play a decisive Game 3 with No. 2 La Salle on Monday night. No matter the opponent, Balutowski said the Lady Titans will be ready.

“We know what we gotta do to SK, we know what we gotta do to La Salle, so at this point we’re not focused on who we’re playing, we just know what we gotta do,” Balutowski said.

Whichever team ends up earning the right to play Warwick should be keeping an eye out for Balutowski, as she has a knack to find “herself in the right spots,” according to McCormick. She’ll continue to do so as she looks to add to her record and, more importantly, close out her Warwick career with another state title.

“It’s really important,” Balutowski said. “At this point, we’ve put so much work in in the four years. We’ve built this program up from almost nothing. We just want to go out on top.”