Found in the same fashion that it was lost, a Moncton man has been reunited with his high school football championship ring nearly two decades after losing it.

A student from the same school on the same trip that Kevin Cormier was on when he lost the ring, caught a glimpse of something shining from the bottom of a lake…

Cormier couldn’t believe his eyes when he was handed the special ring 17 years later.

“I’m glowing, no words can describe it,” Cormier said. “I'm the happiest person alive right now.”

It began in 2000, when Cormier was fresh off a football championship with Harrison Trimble High School.

Cormier was on a canoe trip with his outdoor pursuit class, where they’re required to flip their canoes in a lake.

After flipping his canoe and coming up for air, Cormier discovered the ring had slipped off his finger.

Tom McKillop, who was teaching the class, says Cormier was devastated.

“He was distraught and it just destroyed him, he was so upset,” McKillop says.

McKillop says he still takes his outdoor pursuit class to the same spot every year and tells the story of the missing ring, but never thought it would actually be found.

Brittney Savoy, a student and cheerleader at Harrison Trimble, was on the same class trip this year when she spotted the ring in the lake.

“I saw a ring in the water and at first I thought it was a graduation ring,” Savoy says.

McKillop says he was shocked by her discovery.

“I said ‘No, it’s not, it’s a championship ring. Does it say Kevin Cormier on the side?’ And she goes ‘How do you know that?’ and I said ‘Because he lost that ring 17 years ago,’” says McKillop.

It turns out the ring had spent Brittney Savoy’s lifetime at the bottom of the lake as Cormier lost the ring the same year she was born.

The championship ring was returned to Cormier at the halftime of Harrison Trimble’s homecoming game on Friday night.

Cormier says he feels like it was the chance of a life-time.

“It meant everything to me and you know it just washed away for me, all I had left was memories.”

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jonathan MacInnis.