The Brewer High girls indoor track and field program hasn’t won an Eastern Maine Indoor Track League championship since the 2002-03 season.

The Witches will be looking to brew up something special this year, however, and are one of the early-season favorites as EMITL teams kicked off practices this week.

The first conference meets of the season will be held Thursday and Friday, Dec. 20 and 21 at the University of Maine in Orono.

In order to claim their first EMITL title since Dave Jeffrey’s final season as coach, the Witches will have to dethrone Bangor, which has won four consecutive titles and five of the last six.

Brewer’s last championship season came in between Bangor’s first and second championships in its run.

The Witches may have the talent across the board to dethrone the Rams. Their strengths will be in the relays, sprints and jumps while boasting solid depth in distance events.

“We feel we’re strong in all events, we’ve got depth which we’re very excited about,” third-year head coach Jamerson Crowley said. “It should be fun.”

Brewer’s sprinting and jumping corps will be boosted at the arrival of junior MacKenzie DeGraff, an outdoor track and field sensation who has participated in cheerleading the past two winters.

“She’s such a talent, she’s going to help out that crew,” Crowley said. “She’s a great jumper, a good sprinter too, so she’ll fit right into the mix.”

Freshman Michelle Haluska adds more punch to the distance corps, which already has Ashley Geiser, Bekah Clark, Brooke Madden, and Caitlyn Wilson, who made up the league champion 4×800 team last winter, along with Katie Snow.

Kaitlin Noyes, a pole vault specialist who had a strong cross country campaign, could possibly compete in the middle distance events and the 4×800, Crowley added.

“It certainly creates a very good problem for us, we know she can do a lot of stuff,” he said. “Obviously her background in cross country makes her a powerful threat in the 400 and 800. We’ll see.”

Brewer will also have depth in the 4×200, which qualified for the New England Championships last winter.

Colleen Carr, Erika Cote and Sarah Risser are the returnees from that team, with Kira Giroux and DeGraff legitimate contenders for that fourth spot.

Cote and Carr will also be key factors in the hurdles, Giroux in the shot put and Risser in the 60, 200 and 400.

The defending league champion Rams will face plenty of challenges this winter, and will sorely miss the services of league 400- and 800-meter champion Jennie Lucy, who injured her knee playing soccer this past fall.

While that loss will hurt Bangor in those events, veteran head coach Maynard Walton isn’t pressing the panic button.

“If you lose 20 or 30 points it’s a loss, but we have a good nucleus coming back,” he said. “You don’t see their names in the paper much but they’re there.”

Among the key returnees for the Rams this year will be defending hurdles champ Dee Wilbur, whom Walton will experiment with in the triple jump; sprinter/jumper Kendra Lenz and jumpers Becca Bogan, Robin Treadwell and Catie Zielinski along with sprinter Brittany Chapman.

Bangor will also have many newcomers. Of the 52 girls on Walton’s roster, 15 are freshmen.

“It’s going to take time for them to learn the skills,” the coach said. “I told them be patient, we’re looking toward the end and developing.”

Other athletes to watch will be Old Town’s Hilary Maxim and John Bapst of Bangor’s Kim Spencer in the distance races, Ashleigh Madden of Old Town in the sprints and Mount Desert Island’s Mariah Grover in the high jump.

Maxim is the defending individual champion in the mile and 2-mile, and should come into the season in tip-top shape after enjoying a fine cross country season and placing second in the recent Brewer Turkey Trot 3-mile road race.

McCarthy, Piers qualify

Former St. Joseph’s College basketball player and current Westbrook High cross country coach Sheri (McCarthy) Piers of Falmouth and Kristin Barry of Scarborough punched respective tickets to next spring’s U.S. Olympic Marathon trials in Boston.

Piers and Barry finished eighth and ninth, respectively, in the women’s division of the Philadelphia Marathon, each posting a time of 2 hours, 45 minutes, 36 seconds.

They will join fellow Mainers Joan Benoit Samuelson of Freeport and Wiscasset’s Emily LeVan in the April 12th race.

Ryan McLaughlin can be reached at 1-800-310-8600 or bdnsports@bangordailynews.net.