Houlton collects title in Class C Fort Fairfield captures Class D

BANGOR – It wasn’t a changing of the guard in Classes C and D during Saturday’s regional cheerleading championships at the Bangor Auditorium.

It was more a rearranging.

Both meets boiled down to clashes between the recent perennial powers and in both cases, there were no repeat champions.

The Houlton Shiretowners avenged a runnerup Eastern Maine Class C finish last year by earning 141.2 points – 8.8 points ahead of second-place Calais, which hadn’t finished higher than sixth in the last six years. Annual contender Orono was third at 126.0 and 2005 champ Central of Corinth was fourth at 124.4.

Rounding out the teams moving on to the state finals at Augusta Civic Center Feb. 11 (the top six regional finalists in A, B, and C advance) are No. 5 Washington Academy of East Machias (121.4) and No. 6 Dexter (119.6).

In Class D – where the top eight schools move on since both east and west schools are combined (only two western schools field teams) – Fort Fairfield won its second regional crown in four years with a 127.8-point showing to make Machias runner-up a second straight year with 122 points.

The rest of the elite eight includes Central Aroostook of Mars Hill (121.6), defending state champ Bangor Christian (103.6), Buckfield (102.2), Katahdin of Stacyville (95.8), Deer Isle-Stonington (94.3), and Richmond (92.6).

Class C – As happy as her girls were, it was hard to find more emotion or a wider smile than Houlton co-coach Julie Dunn-Brown’s, who saw her squad win the Shiretowner first regional cheering title since 1994 and fourth overall.

“This, to me, is the one,” Dunn-Brown said. “As a personal goal, I wanted to be able to put that up there with the first, just because we’ve only done it one other time in seven years. This was sweet for me.”

The win extends a sizzling Shires title run as they have also won this season’s Penobscot Valley Conference and Aroostook League titles despite competing against some schools with some advantages.

“We’re at a big disadvantage actually because we don’t have fall cheering and we don’t have a gymnastics program. We have no guys, either,” she explained.

So how do they consistently place in the top six?

“We just work doubly hard,” said co-coach Mary Jane Cleary. “I think we used our full 18 girls, which was more this year than we’ve used, and we had more stunt groups as a result, but if it wasn’t for our creativity [via a choreographer in Massachusetts], we wouldn’t have a routine.

“We’re not cheerleaders, but we know how to cuss and holler, and we can tell what’s wrong and what to fix, but we utilize our resources.”

Houlton’s team members are Justine Anderson, Leah Bates, Tiffany Bossie, Ashley Cleary, Nikki Eastman, Theresa Harvey, Brittany Hill, Kirstein Mayo, Ashley McClure, Mallory McPartland, Margaret Moody, Elyse Peters, Sarah Putnam, Laurel Ranck, Taylor Rutledge, Anna Schools, Laura Schools, Danielle Shields, and Alexi Straubel.

It was tough to tell who the big winners were Saturday morning when the final points were announced. The Calais Blue Devils were just as excited about being second as Houlton was at winning.

“In my coaching term here, the best we’ve done here is sixth, and that was last year,” said Calais coach Heidi Ryan-Broughton, who’s now in her sixth season.

This season has covered lots of uncharted territory for the Blue Devils.

“The past six years, we’ve come in second to Washington Academy in DACs [Downeast Athletic Conference championship meet], and this year we beat them, so that was a big boost,” said senior Keegan McCormick. “I’ve been working for this since freshman year and we lost a lot of people from last year, so this means a lot to me.”

Class D – The emphasis in Saturday’s evening session was on keeping things fairly simple and clean.

“We tried to concentrate on going more clean this year with our routine,” said Fort Fairfield coach Kelly Bubar. “The judges really pushed for safer routines, and so we might not have had all the extra tricks, but it forced us to concentrate more on the technical stuff.”

Another secret to the Tigers’ success is in-house creativity and design.

“We don’t hire a choreographer or an outside person to come in,” said senior Danielle Langley. “A lot of us pitched in and did a lot of the choreography with our coach. We put some music we enjoyed together and brought the routine to life.”

Langley’s teammates are Ruthie Arato, Joshua Barnes, Keiza Bernaiche, Gabrielle Bowker, Angela Burnell, Kylie Chambers, Allan Cloney, Chelsea Danielson, Jennifer Dufour, Janelle Duncan, Amelia Hebert, Ashley McNally, Kellie Osgood, Dani Sanders, Marcus Spear, Aimee Tibbetts, Elizabeth Tuck, Taylor Turner, and Rachel Worcester.

Machias knows what a difference two weeks can make, so the Bulldogs are already thinking about tweaking things to win a second state crown in the last three years.

“Things can completely turn around in a couple weeks, so I think we’ll be adding some twists, perfect the routine further, and I can see us throwing in a couple things,” said coach Shariden Faulkingham, whose teams have finished no lower than fourth place at regionals in her five seasons.