AUBURN – The players trained for months. As game time drew near, the air of competition was heavy. Then the music started and the first competitor danced her way in.

Wait. Danced?

Welcome to the T.G.I. Friday’s World Bartender Championship. Though competition was fierce and the rules rigid, the event lost its Olympic feel the moment the first bottle was tossed into the air.

This was a tournament with booze and a pop beat.

At T.G.I. Friday’s in Auburn on Wednesday night, music blasted from speakers. Contestant Trista Curran wiggled her way behind the bar juggling tins and bottles.

For seven minutes, she slung drinks with pizzazz, shaking and pouring, flipping and dancing. She tossed a lemon behind her back and caught it with a free hand. Still dancing, she scooped ice cream into the top of a glass filled with sparkling liquor.

The routine was strenuous but by the time she was through, all the glasses in front of her were filled and the judges were jotting notes.

“It’s a little nerve-wracking, but I was really into the music. I was feeling loose,” the 24-year-old said. “You have this whole routine but it gets a little harder when you are doing it in front of all these people.”

Curran was one of five local T.G.I. Friday’s bartenders competing in the championship. But there were far more drink slingers that need to be beat out for the bartending title. Across the country, 8,000 bartenders are hamming it up for judges at 900 T.G. I. Friday’s locations.

The purpose: to raise money for the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Last year, the Auburn restaurant raised $1,200 for the charity.

“We’re hoping to raise even more tonight,” said Aaron Ouellette, general manager of the Auburn location. “I have some great bartenders. They’ve been working for about two months training for this.”

The competition is tournament style. The winner from Auburn will go on to the next round in New Hampshire. And on and on it will go until the finals in Las Vegas where the Greatest T.G.I. Friday’s bartender will eventually be crowned.

The tournament is about more than schlepping drinks and trying not to bust bottles over a judge’s head.

“They get judged even on their handshake,” Ouellette said. “It’s about good service, it’s about making a good product and it’s about making sure everyone has a good time.”

While Curran writhed and poured, tossed bottles and smiled, Jeremy Buck sat at the bar bopping to “Groove is in the Heart,” but also paying close attention to her work. A judge from Brunswick, he was rating Curran on everything from the strength of her drinks to the quickness of her smile.

“We’re looking for all the things a bartender should be,” Buck said. “Being friendly is a key.”

Curran was friendly – as friendly as any mortal can be while trying to catch a pin-wheeling bottle on the mouth of a metal shaker, at any rate. A few bottles bounced to the floor or crashed against the bar, but she caught most of them, including the one flipped beneath her leg.

Buck nodded and bent to his notes.

According to Ouellette, T.G.I. Friday’s around the globe combined to raise $250,000 last year for the Make-a-Wish Foundation. The money is raised through auctions conducted between competitions at the bar. Locally, several area businesses contributed goods or services – from hotel stays to massage packages – to be auctioned off.

After Curran was finished, Judy Parker was up and she began her performance with a theatrical flair. Dancing up to the bar, she handed a pair of umbrellas to the judges. Then she got right to it, mixing up drinks and flipping bottles up toward the ceiling. Near the end of her performance, a colleague stepped in to help and the pair flung a glass of beer back and forth behind the bar.

“Talk about alcohol abuse,” one spectator quipped.

For Curran, the first to perform, it was a long night waiting for the rest of the competitors to complete their routines. She moved through the restaurant posing for pictures and cheering on her co-workers. Her breathing back to normal, she wished she had one more crack at the bottles and tins.

“I wish I could go again,” she said.