BANGOR – You’d think a team that won six straight conference championships would know about its tradition of success. That’s not the case with Bangor High School’s girls swim team.

The Rams made it look easy Saturday at Husson College’s pool by scoring no less than 17 meet points in any of the 12 events en route to a total score of 343 – a whopping 123 more than Mount Desert Island, the last non-Bangor team to win the Penobscot Valley Conference title (in 1998). MDI was the runner-up with 220 points.

Brewer finished third in the 400 freestyle relay to score two more points than fourth-place John Bapst in the race and hold off the Crusaders for third place with 160 overall points. John Bapst finished with 156.

The impressive performance was more than good enough to hook a sixth straight PVC title for the Rams, but you wouldn’t know it by asking their coach, the team captains, or most any of the other team members.

“We’ve won both years I’ve been coaching, but I’m not sure how far back our streak goes,” said Cindy Howard, Bangor’s second-year coach.

Most teams would be yelling about it from the rooftops and waving banners if they won six straight. But then, Bangor isn’t like most teams. The Rams are confident, but not cocky.

“We’re trying not to be cocky at all,” said Rams senior co-captain Kayle Shapero, who swam the second leg of Bangor’s winning 400-yard freestyle relay and finished third in both the 200 and 500 freestyles. “We came in here just wanting to do as well as we can and win. We know we’re not the best, even though we have great depth on the team. We know we still have some work to do.”

That work would be preparation for and execution at next Monday’s state meet in Orono. In the meantime, they have some performances to admire and then try to top, as daunting as that might be.

Consider the fact junior Cammi Howard, Cindy’s daughter, won both the 100 butterfly and 500 free in impressive fashion – the latter by more than 171/2 seconds – in addition to swimming the anchor leg of Bangor’s winning 200 and 400 free relay teams.

“This was the first meet as far as relays go, that I think we were really on,” Shapero said. “We’d been mixing things up to see what works up to this point. Our 200 free and 400 free relays were really good today.”

The Rams got contributions up and down the lineup from all four classes. Freshman Gabby Babbin swam the lead leg of both winning relays and finished second in both the 50 and 100 free. Sophomore Erica Simpson swam the third leg of the 400 free relay and was third in the 100 backstroke. Howard led the junior class, and senior Chandra Lippitt won the 1-meter dive.

“We don’t have as many seniors as we normally do, but we have a lot of talented freshmen,” said senior co-captain DeAnn Kennedy. “The depth we have really helps, and it’s kind of like a big family.”

The Rams’ family is sending 12 members to the state finals.

“Everybody, mainly, did their best swims and in PVCs, you don’t usually see your bests, so I’m thrilled,” said Cindy Howard.

Brewer was happy to outduel one cross-river rival.

“We wanted to beat John Bapst really bad and we did that,” said Brewer junior Kallie Pottle. “It came right down to the last swim in the relay.”

The Witches even astounded themselves as they shaved almost eight seconds off their previous best time in the 400 free relay and finished in 4:09.94.

“That was awesome. I guess it was the adrenaline in all of us,” said Pottle, the anchor of both Brewer’s 400 free and 200 medley relays. “Kate [Hanlon] had just gotten first in her breaststroke and I got first in the backstroke so maybe we fed off that.”

Pottle was one of the meet’s individual standouts with wins in the 50 free and 100 backstroke.

Other standouts were MDI sophomore Iris Meehan, who won the 200 individual medley and swam the first leg of the Trojans’ first-place 200 medley relay and the last leg on the second-place 400 free relay team; Dexter freshman Amanda Mason, who won the 200 freestyle; MDI senior Andrea Eaton, who won the 100 free, was second in the 200 free and started off the 400 free relay team; and Ellsworth freshman Shauna Lynch, who won the 100 breaststroke.