BANGOR – Abigail Cain, Devin Secord and Chris Chaffee all arrived at the 12th annual Eastern Maine Soap Box Derby from different competitive perspectives.

They all left bound for the same destination – Akron, Ohio.

Cain, Secord and Chaffee emerged as champions Saturday from a field of 50 racers in three divisions to earn berths in the 70th annual All-American Soap Box Derby scheduled for July 21 in Akron.

For Cain, an 11-year-old from Hampden, victory in the local qualifier was an unexpected development. She’d never raced before, after all.

“My dad kind of got me into it,” she said. “He brought home a flyer one day and asked if I wanted to do it.”

Cain edged Rebecca Botting of Hermon in the Super Stock championship round.

Botting won the first heat down the Buck Street course by a margin of 0.402 seconds on the faster Lane 2 of the two-lane route. Cain, who entered the championship round undefeated during the day-long event, then used Lane 2 to her advantage, winning the second phase of the finals by 0.452 seconds to win the title by 0.050 seconds.

“I didn’t think I was going to get this far,” said Cain, a pupil at Reeds Brook Middle School.

Secord had different expectations, and the 17-year-old Bangor High School junior lived up to them by edging Jeremy Vroom of Bangor by 0.105 seconds in the Masters division final.

Vroom won the first heat by 0.466 seconds from Lane 2, but Secord won the second heat by 0.571 to finish the day undefeated and win his second Eastern Maine championship.

“The competition was tough,” said Secord, who won the 2004 Super Stock division and placed third in last year’s Masters competition. “I’ve been racing against Jeremy for years now and we’ve always been competitive against each other. It’s always a really tough race, so it was good to win.”

Chaffee, fourth in the Stock division a year ago, earned his first trip to Akron by edging Rachael Graves of Brewer in the Stock finals. The 12-year-old Bucksport Middle School pupil lost the first phase of the championship round, as Graves raced to a 0.114-second advantage on Lane 2, but Chaffee won the second heat by 0.162 seconds to win by 0.048 seconds.

“You have to hug the cones,” said Chaffee of the preferred route farthest away from the center of the street, “because the hill is slanted and it will give you a little more of a boost.”

Saturday’s competition featured racers from five counties, including a contingent of Lubec Consolidated School seventh-graders who prepared two Super Stock vehicles as a project for their industrial arts class. The effort was funded by Lubec Cares, a local drug and alcohol abuse prevention program that encourages students to make healthy choices.

The Lubec group was represented on the race course by Kirsty Wright and Chris Grant.

“They’ve been working together,” said George McBride, an industrial arts and math teacher from the school who helped guide the pupils through their project. “They read the instructions. They figured out how to do it. They made it wrong and took it apart and put it back together and made it right, and I think they learned a lot along the way.

“I think they’ve been excited to come without really having a clear idea of what it would be like. They’ve all enjoyed themselves a lot. They also watched people who’ve been racing for years and learned there’s more to it than just heading down the track.”

Soap box derby

LOCAL

At Bangor

Eastern Maine Soap Box Derby

Stock Division

1. Chris Chaffee (Bucksport); 2. Rachael Graves (Brewer); 3. Clay Forrest (Hampden); 4. Jacob Tanner (Newburgh); 5. Logan Tozier (Bangor); 6. Mary Bullock (Newburgh); 7. Jordan Dysart (Newburgh); 8. Brittany Ogden (Holden)

Super Stock Division

1. Abigail Cain (Hampden); 2. Rebecca Botting (Hermon); 3. Sarah Stanley (Ellsworth); 4. Brandyn Tozier (Bangor); 5. Jacob Randall (Eastport); 6. Zachary Bullock (Newburgh); 7. Matthew Crane (Exeter); 8. Zachary Kennedy (Springfield)

Masters Division

1. Devin Secord (Bangor); 2. Jeremy Vroom (Bangor); 3. Darren Lewis (Milo); 4. Holly Legere (Bangor); 5. Emily Fitzpatrick (Houlton); 6. Kolbi Currier (Bradley)