AUGUSTA – A new era has begun for the Brewer, Bangor and Hampden Academy cross country teams.

After years of competing in the Penobscot Valley Conference, all three schools joined the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference this fall.

The three teams have been competitive while adapting well not only to running in a new conference and facing new competition, but seeing different courses.

“It’s been a challenge,” said Bangor coach Ray Cooke, whose boys finished sixth and girls seventh at last weekend’s conference championships at the Augusta Civic Center course.

“The boys have had to learn new strategies and pacing. There’s a lot more hills on the courses, especially Leavitt and Mt. Blue,” Cooke said.

The conference swap has been beneficial for Cooke’s lead horse in senior Riley Masters, who got to compete on the state championship meet course at Leavitt Area High School in Turner at a regular season meet in late September.

Masters also is getting the competition he needs against some of the state’s other top runners in Mt. Blue of Farmington’s Eric Marceau and Lewiston’s Mohamed Noor.

“Last year I didn’t see anybody [in Class A] except Casey [Quaglia],” said Masters, who finished second to Noor in Saturday’s meet. “This year it’s exciting to see all the other runners throughout the season.”

Having already competed on Leavitt’s course this fall, Masters knows he can correct the mistakes he made on the first go-around.

“I know what I did wrong so we’ll see what happens,” he said.

The switch has been very beneficial for coach Glendon Rand’s Brewer teams, in particular the girls, who are establishing themselves as one of Eastern Maine’s top Class A teams this fall.

“We didn’t have a lot of experience on the girls’ side coming in [to the season], running against very good teams like Brunswick and Mt. Blue every week has made them stronger,” said Rand, whose Witches finished second in the girls’ competition Saturday.

Rand admitted it was a tough decision for Brewer to switch conferences, but he had to think of what would be best for the program.

“The PVC is always a strong league, we always had all the competition we could ask for in that league, but it wasn’t the teams we’d run against in regionals and the state meet,” he explained. “I think we feel a little bad leaving the PVC, but we had to do what was best for our program.”

Bangor’s Cooke concurred.

“The standard PVC teams don’t prepare us for the larger Class A meets,” he said. “We’re finding a little more competition in the KVAC because we’re running against more ‘A’ schools, but that takes nothing away from the ‘B’-sized schools in talent. There’s quite a few talented teams [there].”

Rand feels the experience that Brewer has obtained this fall will benefit it next year and beyond – Brewer’s KVAC lineup featured five juniors in Katie Snow, Caitlyn Wilson, Kaitlin Noyes, Brooke Madden and Ashley Geiser, sophomore Bekah Clark and freshman Michelle Haluska.

“It’s given them the experience we need so hopefully when we get to the state meet it won’t be like a big jump in competition,” Rand said.

The passion is there as well, as the runners in Rand’s varsity lineup have been running together since middle school, and the progress has been made starting last fall, when the Witches earned a state-meet berth for the first time since 2000.

“They certainly love to run, they’ve dedicated a lot of time into working hard,” the coach said. “It’s nice when you see hard work pay off.”

Brewer’s boys had a solid showing in the KVAC championships as well, finishing fourth in a strong field which included a powerful Lewiston team, always competitive Mt. Blue and up-and-coming Brunswick.

It’s not just the Class A schools that are giving the Witches, Rams and Broncos the competition they need.

Bangor did compete against two strong Class B programs in Leavitt and Waterville this fall while Brewer fared well against Medomak Valley of Waldoboro and Maranacook of Readfield, whose boys and girls won the “B” titles last weekend.

The Rams’ girls, who are young, are making progress as well as Hampden Academy, which finished ninth in the boys meet and seventh in the girls Saturday.

“We have an up-and-coming younger group that has potential with more experience,” Cooke said.

Like Bangor, Hampden has a young girls’ squad.

Hampden Academy’s lineup Saturday fielded three freshmen, one sophomore and one junior to compliment its two seniors, and once all three conference newcomers build around the promising young talent they all feature, the state championship meet won’t feel like the Super Bowl.

“They’re going to be so competitive that other teams are going to have to work harder,” Cooke said, referring to traditional Western Maine “A” powers like Scarborough and Catherine McAuley of Portland.