A bobble here and a slip there nearly derailed the Mt. Blue express.

But with the slalom left to run, Mt. Blue was still quietly confident.

“That’s our better event,” Mt. Blue ski coach Mark Cyr said following the giant slalom, which left the Cougars even with Edward Little after Day 1 of the Class A alpine championships.

Cyr’s group raced through the slalom by earning just 33 points the following day, and captured the state alpine title – again.

“It doesn’t get boring or tiring,” Cyr said, “but I’m afraid because one year, if we don’t win, people are going to say, ‘What the heck did you do wrong?’ It’s unfortunate when you have such a winning tradition, that if you don’t win one year, people think something must have been wrong. It’s going to happen someday, and I’m sure we’ll handle it as well as we handle the wins.”

They’ve had plenty of practice with the winning part, and the simple constant in each of the Cougars’ titles has been depth.

“The last few years, we haven’t had any skiers who could automatically come in the top one or two places in a big race,” Cyr said. “But we’ve had a lot of kids who can come in top 10 to 12, and that’s how you win team events. It’s nice to have someone go out and win the race, but this is out philosophy. The kids really feel this way.

“Whenever someone had a problem one day, another girl would fill in the spot,” Cyr continued. “It wasn’t even necessarily a problem. Maybe somebody was on that day and skied better. It was nice to have that.”

The scary part of this year’s team was, they could have been even better. Freshman Heather Farrington suffered a broken leg that ended her season far too early. Cyr said she will be a “force to be reckoned with” in coming years, hinting that the Cougars’ dynasty may again be reloading for 2010.

For their dominance on the slopes, the Mt. Blue girls’ alpine ski team is this year’s Sun Journal All-Region Girls’ Alpine Ski Team of the Year.