Cheering regionals Saturday New-look Hampden among six top contenders in Class A

With three local Eastern Maine Class A cheerleading teams taking the top four spots in recent conference competitions, it’s clear Saturday’s regional championships are anyone’s to win. Bangor, Brewer and Hampden have all performed well in the past two weeks at the Big East Conference and Penobscot Valley Conference competitions.

Add in Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference champ Lewiston, runner-up Oxford Hills of South Paris, and close third Gardiner and you have six teams that could take the EM Class A crown when squads take the floor at the Bangor Auditorium at 5:30 p.m.

The Class A competition rounds out a day of regional cheerleading. Class D competition begins at 9:30 a.m.

The Class C meet starts at 11:30 a.m. Class B teams will compete at 3:05 p.m.

The Auditorium will be cleared between the Class C and Class B competitions.

Bangor won the Big East title earlier this month. Brewer took the Penobscot Valley Conference crown. Hampden was second at last weekend’s PVC competition.

Lewiston, the defending state champ, was in Western Maine last year. But the Blue Devils are now competing in the KVAC. They scored 148 points in Monday’s conference meet.

Oxford Hills recorded 140.6 points for second place. Gardiner (132.2) and Lawrence of Fairfield (123.7) were third and fourth, respectively.

The closeness of the teams should make for an interesting competition, especially with the new look of the regional meets.

There will be no callbacks this year and the top six teams will advance to the state competition.

In previous years, each team performed its routine in a preliminary round and the top eight teams advanced to the finals. The top four teams in the final round then moved on to states.

It made for a very long day of competition. This year coaches were asked to choose between giving teams a chance to warm up on the mats before the competition or losing the preliminary round. They chose the latter.

“It’s really tough and all of the teams are really close. It all comes down to who hits it and who doesn’t,” Hampden coach Amy Nadeau said after last week’s PVC competition. “It’s important for next week because it’s only one round. So it’s whoever hits it first round goes to states. There’s no callbacks, no second chances. I think that’s the hardest part.”

The state championships will be held Feb. 7 at the Augusta Civic Center.

Bangor is the defending Eastern Maine Class A champion. Gardiner was last year’s runner-up and Brewer was third.

Hampden on an upswing

With nine seniors returning this season, the Hampden Academy team knew it had to take advantage of all that experience.

The Broncos also wanted to spruce themselves up a bit. To that end, they worked to fundraise enough money for a new look.

“It was like a whole makeover for the team,” senior Evon Hudspeth said. “We knew this year was our strong year and we had to do it. We just wanted to get a new name for the Broncos.”

The new feeling is paying off. Hampden has had a strong showing in two competitions so far this season. The Broncos were second at the PVC meet and third at the Big East meet.

To start, the Broncos decided they needed new mats after practicing on wrestling mats in the past.

“They [mats] were like plastic and we were like, we can’t perform on these because they make our wrists hurt when we did our tumbling,” Hudspeth said. “And it was just like falling on the floor. So we fundraised all this year and last year because we wanted these mats, and we got them. We’re pretty proud of that. Also, we got new uniforms and new shoes.”

The new uniforms and shoes completed the morale-boosting makeover. Full attendance at practices held during winter vacation also helped.

“The whole team came 15 minutes before to get the mats out, we practiced for three hours in the morning, worked around work schedules and Christmas schedules,” Hudspeth said. “We’ve worked so hard this year.”