AUGUSTA — When Madison won the Mountain Valley Conference cheerleading championships, it came at Mountain Valley High School. Monday’s regional championships, meanwhile, were at the much larger Augusta Civic Center.
The more spacious surroundings didn’t seem to faze the Bulldogs. They turned in another strong performance, finishing second to Dirigo and qualifying for the state championships.
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“I think it all just goes to a blur,” Madison senior Toni Candelmo said. “Once we start, we hear the music, it’s just about what we’re doing, and about us. We just look at Coach and we know what we’re going to do.”
Madison (120.6) placed second in Western C, behind Dirigo’s 126.8 points. Monmouth (119,1), Lisbon, Mountain Valley, and Sacopee Valley also qualified for states, which will be held Feb. 7 at the Augusta Civic Center.
“We put (1,000) percent in, and just did what we needed to do,” Madison senior Gretchen Miller said.
Gorham won the Western A title, with 146.2 points.
Monmouth appeared to come out of nowhere for its third-place finish, but the Mustangs had a run of bad luck at the Mountain Valley Conference competition, beginning with coach Kristin Dubois making a mistake on the team’s music.
“MVCs, we had a lot of little technical things go wrong,” Dubois said. “We got no points for jumps. We all jumped, but one of them just had a moment and did the wrong jump. But you know what? That was something we could fix so easily. Right there, we’ve got 16 more points for jumps that we wouldn’t have had.”
Dubois and her assistants screamed with joy after Monmouth’s routine on Monday. Dubois said afterward that it was the best the Mustangs had performed all season.
“We changed some stuff out on the warm-up mat because it wasn’t going,” Dubois said. “So we played it safe. We did something clean, and they hit it. They were loud. They had good spirit. They pulled it together.”
Monmouth has only one senior (Emily Lombardo) and a total of 10 cheerleaders in its routine. Lombardo said that roster size has its advantages.
“I feel like having a small team hasn’t really affected us in a negative way,” Lombardo said, “because it creates opportunities for us to come together, and be stronger, and kind of have that closer connection that some teams may not have.
Madison, meanwhile, has 14 cheerleaders, including three who had never cheered competitively at any level before this season. That allowed the Bulldogs to be a little more creative, such as one stunt where Madison formed three bases and the girls at the top briefly joined hands. Madison coach Amber Noyes said the routine is choreographed by Deneka Deletetsky of Planet Cheer and Fortier Family Cheer Center.
“She does our entire routine,” Noyes said. “(It’s) something we started doing a couple of years ago. Basically, she just comes in and she lays it all out for us, and we kind of go from there.”
Still, the Bulldogs didn’t want to make any radical changes from the MVC competition, instead looking at the regionals as a chance to just take another step with the routine.
“We had a couple minor changes,” Madison coach Amber Noyes said. “But the biggest thing was, we broke down the scores, From there, we tried to clean up the routine as much as possible, without changing a whole lot. Every competition they do, they get a little more comfortable with the routine, so it kind of becomes second nature — nothing seems difficult anymore. It just seems like something they’ve done a million times.”
Noyes plans to take a similar approach the next time the Bulldogs perform in front of the judges.
“It’s going to be the same thing: Breaking down our score, and mostly just cleaning up,” Noyes said. “We hit all of our stunts, but no routine by any team is perfect, so we’re just going to try to continue to clean up (and) make sure that our stunts are really solid going into states.”
Matt DiFilippo — 861-9243
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