BANGOR – No shakes. Few mistakes. Exactly what you have to do when you have one chance to do it right.

The John Bapst cheerleading team earned its third straight Eastern Maine Class B championship Saturday morning with a clean, near-perfect routine at the Bangor Auditorium, scoring 144.4 points to outdistance runner-up Waterville.

The top six teams will compete in the B state championship on Feb. 9 in Augusta.

The Panthers had 139.9 points. Rockland was third with 133.7 points, followed by Caribou (130.2), Old Town (128.4) and defending Class B state champ Hermon (128.2).

Each team had one shot to perform its routine. There were no callbacks.

“We didn’t save anything for the second time, because we knew there wasn’t one, said Kaili Quinn, who along with Sheila Toomey, Melissa Glifort and Brianne Cowan are Bapst’s four senior captains.

The Crusaders, who won the 2005 and 2006 state titles, haven’t made many changes to their routine in the past few weeks other than some footwork in the dance portions. One big difference Saturday, however, was that Cowan went to a flyer position after one of Bapst’s regular flyers got sick.

“I went in with stuff that I learned [Friday],” Cowan said.

Several of the Crusader captains were a bit teary moments after receiving their awards. That’s because they choreographed the routine themselves, unlike many of the larger teams who bring in professional choreographers.

“We had a big part in making this routine,” Glifort said. “It’s kind of unreal to think that we did this and it’s really our own.”

John Bapst’s score Saturday was a huge 15.5-point jump from its previous best of the season. The key for the Crusaders, who don’t have as much tumbling as other teams, is performing complex stunts without mistakes or shaking.

“Our goal this week was to really hit our routine, and if we did that it was out of our control,” Toomey said. “We set the bar really high and it’s just overwhelming to achieve it.”

The rest of the Bapst squad is made up of Lauren Dooman, Lauren Peavey, Alexandria Wright, Kali Shorey, Nikol Harris, Lauren Licata, Amber Weaver, Krysti Sanzaro, Alyssa Foley, Georgia Cartwright, Lauren Freeman, Kylie Thibodeau-Harvey and Kacy Thibodeau-Harvey.

Waterville, which didn’t qualify for states last year, finished third in the Jan. 21 Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class B competition with a score of 131.7, which means the Panthers went up 8.2 points in just five days.

“We made a lot of changes and cleaned up the routine a lot,” said first-year Waterville coach Carlee Evans, who had never coached cheerleading but was the 2004 state gymnastics all-around champion as a junior at Skowhegan High School. “We’ve been on [the team] about doing all the little stuff right, because everything adds up and everything counts.”

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

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