BANGOR – At 10 minutes before noon on Saturday, former Belfast wrestling coach Teddy Heroux declared the Class B state wrestling championships were, for all intents and purposes, over.

“Camden has this thing wrapped up,” Heroux said from his chair at the Bangor Auditorium.

Heroux, of course, was right. Anyone who had spent 37 years coaching a sport as Heroux has done knows a thing or two about it. But it would take seven hours for the Windjammers to seal the deal and win their seventh state title in coach John Kelly’s 15th and final year running the program.

“That’s Teddy for you,” Kelly said. “He’s pretty astute about projecting what’s going to happen. But he was a little premature in making that call.”

Camden Hills finished with 1571/2 points, edging Belfast’s 151. Mountain Valley of Rumford was third with 951/2 and the Falcons were followed by Winslow with 89, Wells at 85, Fryeburg at 641/2, York at 58, Medomak Valley of Waldoboro at 53, Ellsworth at 46, and Lincoln Academy of Newcastle at 27.

The difference in the meet came down to a match that Heroux described as the upset of the tournament. Kelly agreed.

“We had a big upset in the final. My 112-pounder, Kyle Sylvester, knocked off a defending state champ. Sylvester’s a kid that’s never scored a point in a state tournament before in his life until today. If he doesn’t win that match, we don’t win the tournament.”

Sylvester’s win was a double-whammy for Belfast because it came against junior and defending state champion Mike Ames, taking assumed points away from the Lions.

Sylvester managed to break through after a scoreless first period to take control of the match in the second.

“I just knew I was going out there and try my hardest. He’s beaten me three or four times before. But the coach me gave some advice and I followed it,” Sylvester said.

Kelly’s advice was for Sylvester to stay on his feet early in the match and not dive in on Ames, who had defeated Sylvester 11-4 in the regional finals. The strategy worked. After a scoreless first period in which Ames expended a lot of energy going after Sylvester’s legs, the Camden Hills junior became less defensive and went on the attack. He took Ames’ legs away from him in the third period and rode to a 7-2 win.

“We’re a tough side,” Camden Hills’ Chris Remsen said. “We train hard. We lost six or eight state finalists from last year. Plus, we lost some kids for academic reasons. Look at what [Sylvester] did. That really got us going.”

Remsen, a sophomore, won his second straight title at 135 pounds, following junior Levi Rollins, who also won his second state championship in a row at 125 pounds, to the mat.

Those wins and Jake Rollins’ win at 103 pounds were expected by Windjammers followers, but Sylvester’s surprise victory gave a confident team even more confidence.

“We expected to win and we’re going to win,” Levi Rollins said following his pinning of Matt Burns of Ellsworth.

But Belfast wasn’t done. The Lions had four wrestlers to go after Winslow’s Dan Stace pinned Camden Hills’ Joe Zak for the 140- pound title. The Windjammers were finished for the day. The problem with the scenario from a Belfast perspective was that the Lions needed a pin in each of their four matches.

Belfast’s Dustin Armstrong gave his team life with a pin of Andrew Ripley of Mountain Valley at 145 pounds.

Armstrong was followed to the mat by 152-pound teammate Nick Quimet, who pinned Brian Cobb of Ellsworth in 1:08. Quimet found out recently that he has received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He said his focus of late hasn’t been on wrestling.

“I’ve wanted to win [a state championship] forever. But when I was informed that I was going to West Point, I mean states is fun, wrestling is fun, but [West Point] is my future. It took a while to get pumped up. Then it started to look like we had a chance at winning the team championship. I was more excited for the team than individually,” Quimet said.

But it wasn’t to be. The Lions’ Erik Wagner won the state championship at 171, but was unable to pin Craig Fergola of Mountain Valley.

“We’ve got a group of kids, they just never say die. We didn’t come out of this champions today, but second place, I can’t say enough good things about these kids,” Belfast’s first-year coach Neal Wood said.

The third time turned out to be the charm for Winslow’s Stace. After twice finishing the state runner-up, the senior won at 140 and was named Class B’s outstanding wrestler.

“My coach always told me things happen for a reason. I’m glad something good happened to me here today,” Stace said.

Also winning state titles Saturday were Lincoln Academy’s David Gregory (119 pounds), Ben Madigan of Mountain Valley (130), Buck Brown of Fryeburg Academy (160), York’s Mike Cicero (189) and Sean Bradburn (215), and Wells’ Adam Chase (275).

“Usually we’ve been losing the close ones. You can put the three state championships that we lost together and it’s by a total of 61/2 points.” Kelly said. “It’s kinda ironic. I always thought our first [championship] was the best ever as far as how I felt about it. This is my last year and it replaces it as the best.”