Washington Academy captures Class C crown

BANGOR – They had two weeks to think about it.

In the time since winning the Downeast Athletic Conference cheerleading championship Jan. 13, the Washington Academy cheerleaders brushed off 15 points worth of deductions that gave them a disappointing second-round score.

The Raiders took the Bangor Auditorium by storm, literally and figuratively, racking up 128 points Saturday to win the Eastern Maine Class C title. Houlton scored 123.1 points for the runner-up title. Both advance to the Class C state championships Feb. 10.

The Shiretowners, who finished second to Central of Corinth in the Penobscot Valley Conference C-D competition, beat out the Red Devils this time around, although Central, which scored 113.5 points, will still be going to states as the third-place finisher.

Calais, Dexter, and Penquis of Milo will join the top three at states.

Each team performed its routine once to determine the final rankings.

WA tried to move beyond its deductions at the conference championships, which included one for stepping on a hair ribbon that had fallen to the mat during its rain and storm-themed routine.

“We really don’t want to get into that,” senior Rebekah Cox said with a smile and a laugh.

“We came in here and we knew it would Houlton and Central and us,” she added. “But we just had confidence. We had to hit it and compete against ourselves.”

The deductions were disappointing, but they were still relatively minor. That meant the Raiders didn’t have to make too many adjustments for the Eastern Maine competition.

“We changed some dances and worked on perfecting our stunts and technique,” senior Marci Hatt said.

The Raiders opened their routine with a strong stunting sequence consisting of several different one-legged stunts. While the flyers seamlessly moved from heel stretches to front stretches to scorpions, the bases lifted the flyers up and down – called a press – and each of the three stunt groups rotated.

“We wanted to show their flexibility,” coach Laurie Schoppee said of the flyers. “Flexibility, this year, we’ve stepped it up a lot. We do it first thing and it’s like saying, we’re here, we’re serious.”

WA’s most crowd-pleasing move is a basket toss near the end of its routine. Schoppee estimated flyer Brittany Bigger – who at 87 pounds happens to be the smallest of the Raiders despite her last name – gets about 30 feet in the air with the male Raiders basing the toss.

“They add a lot of strength to the team,” Schoppee said of her boys. “And personality.”

The rest of the Raiders team members are Caylin Beaudoin, Letitia Bellows, Shawn Leighton, Katrina McCormick, Ashley Noyes, Gabrielle Rushforth, Arianna Sanborn, Saxon Schmauderer, Colin Wagner, Dylan Wright, Caissie Nevala, and Katherine Veader.

Like WA, Houlton opened its Michael Jackson-themed routine with a strong stunt sequence and carried it through the rest of their routine.

To open, the Shiretowners have a rarity: four stunt groups with flyers doing one-legged stunts, including the difficult scorpions and arabesques, and all four flyers twist down.

“We wanted to make that first impression,” Houlton coach Katie McGary said. “It’s very difficult to have four groups doing that intense of a stunt, but we knew it would be an impressive opening to the routine.”

McGary said the Shiretowners didn’t make any major changes to account for an increase of about 2.9 points between PVCs and regionals.

“We just worked on cleaning things up,” she said. “We wanted to make everything solid and fix everything, but it was all easy stuff. We really focused on that.”