Jimmy Spencer knows that championship feeling.

The Belfast wrestler twice has won individual state titles, at 119 pounds as a sophomore and at 130 pounds as a junior.

But as he reflected on last weekend’s Eastern Maine Class B meet, his thoughts weren’t about individual accolades but a team breakthrough, as Belfast not only won the title but ended rival Camden Hills of Rockport’s 13-year reign as regional champion.

For Spencer it fostered memories of another title won four years earlier but seemingly eons ago.

“When I was a captain my eighth-grade year we won [the Pine Tree League], and looking at it now these are all the kids from the team my eighth-grade year,” said Spencer, one of two seniors on this year’s squad. “We’re older, but it’s the same middle-school team and they were really tough, so I figured we had a really good chance of winning.”

It has been a frustrating wait between Spencer’s eighth-grade year and now, and an even longer wait for the high school program, which last won a state championship in 1995.

That’s because Belfast boasts such a rich wrestling heritage, which includes five state titles.

The first, in 1969 when there was just one class, marked the first time any school other than Sanford won the Class A crown. The Lions went back-to-back the next year and have maintained their tradition as a program to be respected through the decades.

Belfast won Class B state titles in 1987, 1994 and 1995, and also finished second four times, in 1967, 1968, 2002 and most recently last winter.

The Lions have been on the brink throughout the current decade, finishing second twice and third five times. Only in 2001, when they finished fifth, have the Lions been out of the top three during the new millennium.

“As I was growing older, I thought this team was just going to get better and better,” said Spencer. “When I was a freshman, I looked at that team and they had guys like Kyle Bonin, Norman Gilmore, Tony Gilmore and Ben Dunham and I thought, ‘Wow, this team has to win it.'”

Spencer and classmate Mike Rolerson, also a reigning individual state champion from 2007, now have one more chance to win it all – Saturday when the Lions trek to Rumford for the Class B state meet.

They are the lone seniors on an otherwise young but talented Belfast squad that has been molded through youth and middle-school programs and is now riding into the high school state finals on the momentum of its Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference and regional championships under the tutelage of coaches Ted Heroux, Mike Cummings and Tim Caldwell.

“All the kids have great attitudes this year, they want to work hard,” said Cummings after the Eastern B meet. “They’re feeling that drought and they want to get it done, so they’re feeling this might be the year.”

It won’t be easy. Camden Hills will be there, and Western B champion Mountain Valley of Rumford also has the home-site advantage. York and Wells also are formidable challengers, so if this is to be the year for Belfast, the Lions will have earned it.

“We’ve got good numbers [11] going over to Mountain Valley,” said Cummings, “so we’ve just got to hope that we peak [this] week and that we didn’t peak [last] week.

“But if we stay focused and the kids don’t get big heads, then I think we’re on the right track.”

eclark@bangordailynews.net

990-8045