BATH — The Morse Shipbuilders and the Bath High School Alumni Association had a winner — they thought.

Just moments after today’s 3 p.m. voting deadline, alumni spokesman Troy Cunningham confirmed from his Florida home that Morse had won the Region I championship in the USA TODAY competition for top mascot. The victory would Morse into the national championships, which begins on Friday.

Not so fast.

In an email sent less than an hour later, Cunningham announced that USA Today had just extended the voting to resume on Monday and go through to Wednesday, “in order to be fair to everyone.” 

“I’d like to think that we had nipped this one in the bud,” Cunningham said. “I’m still very proud but this is what's going on.”

Jamie Kopf, a call center representative with USA TODAY publicher Gannett, said late Thursday afternoon that there were significant technical difficulties with the voting website.

“There were lots of complaints the votes were not accepted, and huge lines,” Kopf said.

Morse leads with 1,092,633 votes — about 10,000 more than the second-place Kingswood Oxford Wyverns in what had amounted to a two-way race for the Region I championship.

Cunningham, who helped coordinate a worldwide voting effort among Morse alums, was thrilled at the time.

“I just got the numbers,” said Cunningham, who said he voted thousands of times on at usatodayhss.com. “To me it feels like I was back in the ’80s, watching the basketball games. It’s that sort of adrenaline.”

Kingswood-Oxford, is an elite private school of 500 students in West Hartford, Conn. Morse, a public high school, has 640 students.

The six regional winners were to compete from March 15-25 for the chance to be named the best high school sports mascot in America. The national winner will receive $2,000 for its athletic department. Second place will be awarded $1,000, with $500 for third, $250 for fourth and $100 for fifth.

Cunningham, a Realtor who lives in Florida, said that people like Kristen Waterman Basil, Kelly McKellar, Kathy Mitchell, Monica Hynes, Brian Hatch and Hazel Meserve for their huge voting efforts. Hundreds of other Morse alumni around the world did the same, Cunningham said, and Facebook was a major voting tool.

“It’s been persistence, persistence, persistence — we spread the word and keep going,” he said. “We’re talking about our school, our heritage, our tradition. You pass it onto a couple of people, and they pass it on.”

Linda Koehling of West Bath, a 1966 Morse grad, was in on the fun.

“I’d like to see them win — I certainly would,” Koehling said earlier this week. “That would be cool. Now I’ve got to go vote some more!”

Morse, which won the Maine championship, was pitted against Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey in the Region I contest.

The Shipbuilder mascot, of course, depicts the shipbuilding heritage in Bath. The Bath High School Alumni Association is the oldest high school alumni association in the country.

A wyvern is a legendary winged creature with a dragon’s head, reptilian body, two legs (sometimes none), and a barbed tail. Depending on the cultural specifications, wyverns can breathe fire, or possess a venomous bite, or possess neither or both of these.