BATH – Lewiston coach Becky Angelides paced the side of the pool at the Bath YMCA, clipboard in hand. Her team – all 38 athletes, save for a few in the pool itself – lined up at the end of the pool near the 25-yard turn.

And they were loud.

Angelides moved from there to the start and back, over and over, watching the times pop up on the overhead display. She scribbled on her time sheets, paced back to the starter’s area, and then back to her team again.

“We knew we needed to hold our seeds, we were hoping to get some better times,” Angelides said.

They did, and then some.

The Blue Devils flooded the field with four swimmers in each event and overcame six Morse first-place finishes – including two in relays – to earn their first KVAC crown with a 293-233 team victory.

“We had an idea that we were seeded high,” Lewiston senior Tucker Adams said. “But we knew we needed to persevere. We had best times from people all over the place. It showed how badly we wanted this.”

Morse had won the previous seven KVAC titles.

“They have a lot of depth,” Morse sophomore James Wells said. “We’re kind of in a rebuilding point right now, and our numbers are down just a bit.”

Wells did his part for the Shipbuilders. He set team, pool, KVAC and state records in the 100-yard backstroke with a 52.56-second finish. He also nearly did the same in the 50-yard freestyle, an event in which he set the state record earlier this season.

“I was coming in seeded first, so there wasn’t much I could do beyond making sure I won my events, except help cheer on the rest of my team,” Wells said. “I tried to pump up my teammates, because I knew we needed a lot of point changes if we were going to have a chance.”

Lewiston didn’t win a single event Saturday, but it didn’t matter.

The Blue Devils placed four swimmers in the top 12 in every individual event except the 100-yard breaststroke, where they placed three.

Kurtis Stocker accounted for a handful of points with a second-place finish in the 500-yard freestyle, and he was a part of two second-place relay teams.

Junior Derek Morris finished second in the 100-yard backstroke, fourth in the 200-yard freestyle and he, too, took part in a pair of second-place relays.

Adams led off one relay, swam third in another and grabbed points with a fifth in the 100-yard butterfly and a seventh in the 200-yard freestyle.

Senior Patrick Roy took fourth in the 500-yard freestyle, third in the 200-yard freestyle and helped on a relay.

“We knew Morse had lost some good guys,” Adams said. “We’ve always been second to them, but we stepped up when we had to today.”

The win completes the Blue Devils’ undefeated season in the KVAC.

“We never thought we’d go undefeated,” Roy said. “Even here, we knew Morse would give it a run.”

Edward Little’s Tim Brodsky highlighted the meet for the Eddies, earning a win in the 200-yard freestyle and a second-place finish in the 100-yard butterfly.

On the girls’ side, Morse had the depth to go along with its top-end talent and swam off with a 366-244 win over Lewiston. The Shipbuilders earned nine first-place finishes – including all three relays – three seconds and two thirds.

Despite the runner-up finish, Lewiston did better than its seed times, getting contributions from several younger athletes in the process.

The Edward Little boys finished fifth out of seven teams with 113 points, while the EL girls earned fifth out of nine teams with 109.5.