Old Town bounces, jumps, hops to PVC title

HERMON – The Old Town cheerleading team has become something of a powerhouse of late, having won the last two Class B Eastern Maine and state champions.

So it was no surprise that coach Kristen Braun’s Indians had a four-point lead over Brewer when the call-backs were announced after the preliminary round of the Penobscot Valley Conference championships Saturday at the high school gymnasium here.

There was some surprise at the final score, however.

“We got 80 points?” Old Town senior Missy Dorr exclaimed when informed of the final scores. “We got 80 points!”

For the second year in a row the Indians proved their cheerleading dominance, beating out five Class A teams and five other Class B squads for their second straight PVC championship.

Runner-up Brewer finished with 69 points, giving Old Town a whopping 11-point win.

Bangor scored 66 points to finish third, emerging from a four-way tie for third place going into the final round. Caribou was fourth with 64 points, Hermon finished fifth (62) and Nokomis was sixth (57).

Sumner of East Sullivan took the Class C-D championship in a meet held at Schenck High in East Millinocket.

Central of Corinth was second with 67 points and Penobscot Valley of Howland had 65 points. Penquis of Milo and Mattanawcook of Lincoln both scored 58 points. Stearns of Millinocket finished with 52.

Ellsworth, Bucksport, Presque Isle, Hampden and John Bapst of Bangor also competed in the A-B meet. Orono, Bangor Christian, Katahdin of Sherman Station, Dexter and Piscataquis of Guilford rounded out the C-D field.

In the A-B meet 12 teams started in the preliminary round, and half were called back for the final round. Teams have 2 minutes and 50 seconds to perform the routine.

An estimated 1,600 spectators packed the gymnasium to watch the competition for the title.

“Everything has to go right in order for it to be perfect. The little things hurt you, like if you fall or wobble,” said senior Erica Perry.

There was none of that in Old Town’s routine. The lifts held up thanks to strong bases and flyers who held their balance without shaking. The movements were synchronized. The constant motion matched Old Town’s Bounce, Jump, Hop theme (all the songs mixed into their music had some form of bouncing, jumping or hopping in the title).

The Indians try to include elements in their routine that they know they can stick, rather than trying fancy tricks.

“We make sure we can hit everything. We don’t bring in material that is beyond our level at the time,” Perry said.

The Indians did include a stunt near the end of the performance that had three girls carried by their teammates while lying on the stomachs, legs crossed at the knees in the air, leaning on an elbow with a smile. It was totally original, and it charmed the crowd.

“We said, well, how do we want to end this? Some cute sit kind of stunt would be nice, but we also wanted to end up back to and then switch around to the front in some kind of extension. So we just played with it until it looked the way we wanted it too,” said Braun, who has 12 returning cheerleaders from last year’s team.

Perry and Dorr’s teammates are Kaille Bradstreet, Meghann Foster, Courtney Gibbs, Stacy Goodspeed, Kim Hamel, Ashley Hogan, Heather Lonko, Angela Madden, Cassie Madden, Cheri McDonald, Miranda Parsons, Amanda Shields, Rachel Spinney, Avril Williams and alternates Wendy Dorr, Jessie Ford, Val Dionne and Jeni Cunningham.

Old Town, Brewer and Bangor were the only teams to have several tumbling sequences apiece, with three or four girls at a time flipping across the mat. The tumbling is important, Brewer coach Kristie Reed said, but a clean routine is the key.

“It’s whoever has the cleanest routine wins,” she said. “Old Town does a very good job. None of their stunts shake and everything else is clean. I think we’re all the same in tumbling but we don’t score very high in tumbling. It’s the details. It’s the little things.”

Bangor performed a solid preliminary routine but faltered right at the end, when one side of its hitch pyramid didn’t get up in time. The Rams worked on the finale during the 10-minute warm-up session before the final round – and got it right when it counted.

“Our left side, Morgan Keenan’s leg got caught in the base’s arms and we just worked on [the pyramid] and worked on it and we had to move the arms so we could get it up,” said Bangor coach Stephanie Crane. “We just had to do it over and over. It was a definite improvement and the girls are very happy with what they did.”

Brewer’s team members are Ashley Bean, Christina Bush, Leah Cameron, Angela Debeck, Samantha Floyd, Amanda Hamm, Heather Hart, Jamie King, Erin Knowles, Lauren Meehan, Lauren Parker, Sara Patterson, Jessica Ryerson, Monica Tardiff, Natasha Worcester and alternates Margo Relford and Riley Godley.