Witches roll, win ‘A’ title in Big East

HERMON – By its own standards, the Brewer cheerleading team fell a bit short in Saturday’s Big East Conference Class A championships at Hermon High School.

Still, an extremely high average of 142.75 points was more than enough for the Witches to earn their second title this season.

Bangor finished as the runner-up for the second straight week with a 129.9 average. The Witches and the Rams finished in the same order in the Jan. 13 Penobscot Valley Conference championship meet.

Hampden was third, followed by Old Town and Nokomis of Newport – also the same finish as the PVCs.

Each team performed its routine twice. Scores from the two rounds were averaged together and the averages were used to determine the final rankings.

Brewer scored a 140.2 in the first round and a whopping 145.3 in the second.

The Witches went into the competition seeking a much higher final total of 154.5. It was a score they came up with after coach Kristie Reed gave them a report card based on last Saturday’s competition, in which Brewer had a 141.8 average.

“The little things were what we were losing points in, timing, little things like that, said tri-captain Kristin Wood. “We were kind of beating ourselves.”

In their quest to up their scores, the Witches made some changes to their routine, including a section in which the team goes from a hitch pyramid to scorpion stunts.

“We realized there was a dead spot [in the routine] where if we wanted to be showy we needed to put something else in there,” said captain Courtney Wright. “Instead of bringing [the flyers] down, we keep them up.”

They also buckled down during practice in other areas, including jumps.

“Every time we weren’t doing something to our full capability, Kristie made us do jumps because our scores have been getting lower,” captain Ali Caron said. “So we wanted to get those together.”

The rest of Brewer’s lineup includes Martina Bosse, Jessica Currier, Kelly Cyr, Mackenzie DeGraff, Dominique DeFilipp, Taylor DiFrederico, Jenna Duran, Tara Geaghan, Alicia Hallahan, Ashley Martin, Alycia Stevens, Kayla Tripplett, Alexa Washburn, Jewels Watson and alternates Kasey Lingley and Ashley Smith.

Bangor, which like many teams didn’t have a full week of practice because of snowstorms Monday and Friday, made a few changes to its routine after PVCs.

The Rams’ average did drop a bit from last week’s 131.85, but they improved in some key areas at the Big East meet.

“We added some difficulty because our dance score was kind of low [at PVCs] and we picked up half a point,” Bangor coach Stephanie Crane said. “We wanted to go up in showmanship, which we did,”

The Rams will likely stick with this version of their routine, Crane said, working to make sure everything is steady in preparation for regionals.

“We’ll be all right by next weekend,” she added.

Bangor won the junior varsity competition.