Resilient Witches capture PVC championship Brewer remained confident; Hampden 2nd, Bangor 3rd

BAR HARBOR – The Brewer High cheerleading squad finishes its routine this year with 15 members of the team lying in clusters on the thick blue mats used in cheering competitions.

Sometimes, when the music ends, the girls remain on the mats for a second or two before getting up, wondering if the performance was good enough.

But there was none of that after the team competed in the final round of Saturday’s Penobscot Valley Conference competition at MDI High School.

The Witches just knew.

“Sometimes there’s some hesitation of, do we get up yet?” senior Riley Godley said. “But there wasn’t even any hesitation that time. I don’t think we waited. We automatically got up and started freaking out. That was such a morale boost for us.”

Not only was the performance a morale boost, but also an emotional lift after a rough week. And it was enough to give Brewer the PVC title for the second year in a row.

The Witches scored 149.8 points, winning the competition by a margin of almost eight points. It was vindication after a disappointing fourth at last Saturday’s Big East Conference meet and a week in which many team members were sick and a practice was canceled.

Hampden Academy earned runner-up honors, scoring 142 points. Bangor, last week’s Big East champ, was third with 140.2 points, and Ellsworth came in fourth after scoring a 135.1.

John Bapst of Bangor, the runner-up last weekend, was fifth. Old Town finished sixth, and Bucksport was seventh. Those seven teams were called back after earning the highest scores from the preliminary round.

Nokomis of Newport, Hermon, MDI, Foxcroft, Caribou, and Presque Isle also took part in the competition.

Brewer had a lot to focus on after the Jan. 10 Big East meet. But an illness affecting the entire school (a girls basketball game set for Saturday was postponed because of sickness) touched the cheerleading team, too. Several girls weren’t feeling well, and coach Kristie Reed had to cancel a practice for the first time because her young son was sick.

The Witches didn’t have a good start to the PVC competition as their music didn’t work properly at the beginning of their preliminary performance and they had to restart the routine. Then Brewer had a five-point penalty for an incorrect landing on a tumbling pass, and the team missed a stunt at the end, leaving them in third place after the first round.

But Brewer used those little things as motivation. The Witches didn’t make many mistakes in the final round, hitting their tough stunts. They didn’t have any penalties in the finals after a 10-point deduction last weekend.

“It all comes down to who is mentally the toughest,” Reed said. “That’s been our biggest problem, just being tough enough to do it when little things go wrong. For us, there was a little pride on the line.”

The rest of the Brewer team includes Whitney Boudreau, Jillian Dougherty, Melissa Jacobs, Libbi Lingley, Kiley McCloskey, Ashley Spencer, Kristin Wood, Ali Caron, Holly Dumond, Erica Hart, Danielle King, Hannah Mahon, Erin Smith, Hannah Taylor, and alternate Nikole Noddin.

Hampden coach Amy Nadeau said she and assistant coach Heather Fraser, a former Brewer cheerleader, wanted more difficulty in the Broncos’ routine. To that end they added a power press to the team’s pyramid so that the bases moved the flyers up and down instead of just holding them up.

“That was a little shaky on us in the second round and that’s something we’re going to have to work on for the regionals,” Nadeau said. “But difficulty scores are important. … We weren’t sure how things would go because we made some changes, but I’m very pleased.”

Bangor and Brewer performed first and second, respectively, in the final round. Hampden, which was in first place after the first round, was the final team to perform.

“It was kind of nice because we got to see what we had to compete against,” senior Evon Hudspeth said. “We did everything we could. We knew we had to sell it the second time. We were thinking, we’re in first place right now and we have to keep that. But you know what? We’d love to have second because Brewer’s a great team.”