AUGUSTA — Lynette Morency, the Lewiston High School cheering coach, is used to seeing strong performances, and the Blue Devils gave her another one Monday as they won their fifth straight Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class A title at the Augusta Civic Center.
Morency still keeps a strong eye on the team, noticing where there is room for improvement and also where the Blue Devils are doing the little things that keep the team performance strong.
One thing she saw was when a base member of a lift moved to keep a flier from falling, which could have turned a bobble into a huge deduction.
“That’s a freshman, and she did a great job,” said Morency of the base member.
“She absolutely saved that stunt, hands down.”
She also praised the flier, who kept doing her job without worrying about what was happening below her.
“They deserve a lot of credit for what they did. … When you see things like that happen, you know you’re team is starting to work as a team,” said Morency with a smile.
Lewiston displayed a variety of tumbles, lifts and movements that carried it to a 155-point total for its performance.
“We move fast, we put up crazy stunts, we tumble all over the place. That’s what we do. It makes it fun to watch,” said Morency.
Bangor finished second with 144.7, followed by Edward Little of Auburn at 127.7 and Brewer at 125.9 in the 12-team Class A competition.
Medomak Valley of Waldoboro scored 135.5 points to defeat defending KVAC champ Leavitt of Turner Center and seven other schools to recapture the KVAC Class B title the Panthers won in 2011.
Leavitt finished second with 118.8 points with Gardiner third at 112.7 and Waterville fourth at 104.6.
The cheering regional meets will be held Saturday with the Eastern Maine Class A regional at Augusta, along with Western Maine Classes A, B and C. The Eastern B and C and statewide D regionals will be held at the Bangor Auditorium.
The top regional teams advance to the state championships Feb. 9 at the Bangor Auditorium.
The Jamie Beth Shible Award for most improved teams went to Brewer in Class A and Medomak Valley in B.
Brewer scored 98.6 in last year’s KVACs, and the Witches’ improvement was 27.7 percent.
Medomak was runner-up last year at 116.8 before making the jump back to the top spot. The Panthers’ improvement was 16 percent.
Bangor coach Katie Robichaud, whose Rams finished second to the Blue Devils again, knew her team faced an uphill challenge.
“The biggest difference between Lewiston and Bangor is their start point is higher than ours in the tumbling category. They have a lot more elite and advanced tumbling skills,” said Robichaud.
She was pleased with the Rams’ performance, its first this year after injuries kept them out of earlier competitions.
“First time out, they did an outstanding job and they can only go up from here,” Robichaud said.
Making up those 10-plus points will be difficult, said Robichaud, because it’s a wide gap, but they have parts to work on, including timing, motion and, especially, conditioning.
“We’re getting tired in the last minute of the routine,” said Robichaud, “but the more we do it, the better off our jump score will be and our motion score will be because they’ll be that much more conditioned.”
Robichaud said the four days of practice aren’t enough time to see a big boost in a team’s performance.
“But the 2 1/2 weeks to states are,” she said.