LEWISTON — There hasn’t been a Maine-based New England champion in a team sport in more than 30 years.

Lewiston High School cheerleaders are both haunted and motivated by how close they came to breaking that streak a year ago. Fewer than two points separated the Blue Devils from victorious Whitman-Hanson High School of Massachusetts.

“It was my side of the pyramid that came down,” senior Krista Thomas said of the ill-fated stunt that probably spelled the difference. “I came back with a vengeance.”

So did everyone else. Lewiston, a team anchored by six seniors and 10 freshmen, will make its fourth consecutive appearance in the New England meet Saturday in Lawrence, Mass.

Thomas and fellow seniors Tiana Lacombe, Rachel Mills and Shae Godbout were part of a team that finished seventh in 2009 and fourth in 2010.

On the heels of their second straight sweep in conference, regional and state competition, the Devils feel qualified to climb that elusive final step on the ladder after the late slip in 2011.

“We’ve been talking to people who have seen our team and the other teams that will be competing, and they agree we’ve got it,” Mills said.

Ellie Rojas, a second-year cheerleader who made the transition from gymnastics, and Rashonda Bailey, a transfer from Edward Little, round out Lewiston’s senior delegation.

They’ve built the state’s powerhouse program under the guidance of coach Lynnette Morency, who sees a new urgency in her team as it prepares for the elite competition.

“We’ve always gone down the last three years saying it’s an obligation. We have a team dinner, we go to the mall. Our mindset has been this is fun,” Morency said. “We’ve never said, ‘We want to win this.’ By losing it last year and having it slip through our fingers, now we’re like, ‘OK, it’s time.’ ”

The competition in Lewiston’s classification changed dramatically three years ago when perennial champion Pinkerton Academy of New Hampshire moved into a co-ed division.

Biddeford edged Lewiston for third place in 2010, representing the best performance by a Maine squad before the Devils’ flirtation with the title.

Lewiston’s 2011 team set a Maine record with its point total in the Class A state meet. While the Blue Devils don’t have that group’s experience and haven’t always been able to match their near-perfection, this year’s successors have compensated by injecting new wrinkles and risks into their three-minute program.

“Coach has been instilling in us that last year we had the chance to rewrite history with our high score,” Godbout said. “This year we’re getting the opportunity to make history by being the first Maine team to win New Englands.”

Winning this weekend will require overcoming Maine’s compressed winter season.

Lewiston captured its state title on Feb. 12. No in-state competitions are permitted after that date. Massachusetts and New Hampshire, meanwhile, held their state championship meets on Saturday.

“If I competed a week after states, you know what my kids would look like? I give them two weeks completely off,” Morency said. “Then we go about an hour every other day for three weeks. As short as the season is, it’s a long season.”

The coach and her cheerleaders try to look at the scheduling quirk as a benefit. Lewiston had a chance to rejuvenate body and mind before returning its focus to unfinished business.

“This week because we had that time off we had to push that much harder to get to the level we were at states, and better,” Bailey said.

Seniors also are using the week to prepare the younger Devils for the stress of the enhanced competition.

Rather than try to compare scores — a fruitless task, given the different rubrics from state to state — Lewiston approaches the next level as a competition against itself and previous performances.

“For some people it can be a little bit more intimidating. Years before we were going down there to see what we could do to compete with the big dogs,“ Lacombe said. “Now that we know we’re up there, it’s something that we take a lot more seriously now. It means a lot not just to the seniors and to the coach but to the state of Maine.”

Previous journeys to the New England showcase left the Devils feeling that their tumbling passes were a relative weakness.

They invested large amounts of their time and money attending a camp in Gloucester, Mass., run by Coach James Speed of NCAA champion Louisville. Last year’s best-ever showing was a sign that the investment paid off.

One final step and one final payoff remain.

“It’s a big deal to us,” Morency said. “I tell the seniors, ‘You started this four years ago. I told you four years ago I wanted to win a New England championship. Let’s do what last year’s team couldn’t do. Let’s make history.’ ”

koakes@sunjournal.com

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