LEWISTON — For all the rightful pride that Lewiston High School takes in its cheerleading program, the last thing coach Lynnette Morency wanted was for the competition to use that confidence as a motivational tactic.

Then, as the Blue Devils prepared for last month’s Class A state championship, they ordered t-shirts for themselves and their “Super Fans,” a rite of winter that typically reflects the team’s spirit and musical theme.

What arrived in the box revealed that the cheering gods, and perhaps the screen printers, have a sense of humor.

“We put a big record album on the back of it, and it was blue. And I looked at them when they first put them on and said, ‘Oh my God. That looks like a target on your back,'” Morency said. “It’s a lot of pressure for them. Everybody’s gunning for them. I’m not complaining.”

There would be no point in it, because that’s the price of excellence. Maine’s champion three years running, Lewiston looks for back-to-back titles at the New England meet Saturday in Lawrence, Mass.

In 2012, Lewiston cheering became the first Maine school to win a team title since the Maine Principals’ Association approved a return to New England competition in many of the non-stick-and-ball sports more than a decade ago.

“It’s a little more pressure to win again,” senior co-captain Kara Barnies said. “We know what it feels like to win, so going back to not winning would be pretty difficult. That’s why we keep working hard.”

The hard work comes with a price. Add cheerleading to the list of sports that essentially have become a year-round entity.

Lewiston cheerleaders meet for summer workouts in June and attend a team camp in July. During autumn they rehearse many of their stunts while cheering at football and soccer games.

Official practice starts Thanksgiving week. Then a flurry of local, conference and regional competitions in January leads up to the state competition on the second weekend of February.

That’s when the season ends for all but a select few. Twelve Maine teams earned the right to compete at New Englands by virtue of their top-three finish in each class at the state meet. Only four are going, according to Morency.

If you think Maine mud season is interminable and intolerable, try being a Blue Devils cheerleader and dealing with the five weeks of down time between their two biggest competitions of the season.

“A lot of us go to the gym. We eat healthy the entire season. We cut out soda. We cut out anything that could hurt our bodies,” senior co-captain Kirsty Beauchesne said. “We have a Facebook page, a private one for just the girls. We’re always talking to each other, motivating each other to stay active and keep going. Being back, we miss each other so much that we pick up right where we left off.”

Lewiston has experience dealing with calendar-related adversity. Thanks to a blizzard, the state meet two hours away in Bangor was moved from a Saturday afternoon to a Monday night.

All four classes consequently were thrown together in one meet, meaning the Blue Devils had to arrive at 2:30 p.m. for a three-minute performance that wouldn’t begin until after 9 o’clock, in front of a crowd that would be half its usual size.

Perhaps it was a proper dress rehearsal for the New England meet. The other five states staged their state championships this past weekend. Lewiston hasn’t competed since Feb. 11 and only returned to practice in earnest on March 4.

Compound it all with a reputation that travels before them, and, yes, everyone’s sights, either literally or figuratively, are perpetually on the Devils.

“We walked into Bangor Auditorium, last team to perform. There must have been a half-dozen video cameras looking down on us,” Morency said. “I’m just looking at my freshmen and thinking, ‘Welcome to Lewiston cheering.’ Rock star status.”

There are more freshmen (seven) than seniors (five) on this year’s squad of 22 girls, a piece of demographic data that makes Lewiston’s ongoing excellence even more impressive.

“You cannot explain to your freshmen what it feels like to be standing on the back of that mat in front of four classes of kids and fans. I had two of them I thought were going to vomit on me,” Morency said. “I said, ‘Take a deep breath. Just do what you do. (Imagine) this is the National Guard building (the team’s practice facility) and when the music comes on, just do what you need to do.’ You can’t prepare anybody for that. It’s like no other beast out there. What other sport comes down to two minutes and 53 seconds, once?”

Lewiston hasn’t stood pat. The team changed its choreographer this season to shake things up.

The Devils also keep increasing the complexity of their routines, even through huge personnel changes from year-to-year. That may have been the difference between finishing second by eight-tenths of a point at New Englands in 2011 and winning in 2012.

“I think we used to go to New Englands and it felt good to play the big dogs. We felt like we deserved it. Now that we’re the defending title-holders obviously it’s a lot of pressure, but our degree of difficulty shows,” Beauchesne said. “The competition in New England is so much larger than just in Maine. The judges see the degree of difficulty between all the teams, and I think that’s what sets us apart.”

“It’s at a higher caliber. Every year we get stronger. Every year we get more difficult. People get better skills,” Barnies added. “It’s really nice to show that Maine can definitely bring some talented cheerleaders. Last year we took it and we’re hoping to take it again.”

And again, the shirts don’t lie.

“We made T-shirts specifically for New Englands that say ‘defending our title’ on the back of the shirt. Ok, c’mon. You’ve got to walk the talk,” Morency said. “I think for a lot of teams that go down there, it’s an honor to go. I think they don’t look at it as they really have a shot to win, so they lose some of their zest and drive, where we are driving. We want to win. We want to go down there and reclaim our title.”

The New England championship is actually smaller than Maine’s state meet, with a total of 23 teams split into multiple divisions.

Morency has scouted every team in Lewiston’s class, weighing the Devils’ season worth of scoresheets against theirs.

To put it bluntly, nobody in the Devils’ camp considers them an underdog.

“States is more well-known. Winning a state championship is a big deal,” Beauchesne said. “New Englands for us is just icing on the cake. It’s one more thing to be proud of and to bring home and show Maine that we deserve it.”

[email protected]