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Cheer team just misses return trip to State Championship
Same score from 3A title win not quite good enough at 4A-II level
By ERIC MUNGENAST
Staff Writer
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Eric Mungenast/Maricopa Monitor, Junior captain Angela Bullion, center, leads the Maricopa High cheer squad during practice on Monday. The team fell just short of making it back to the State Championships after a seventh place regional finish.
Maricopa finished seventh place in the Show Cheer category with a score of 215, which was the same score it posted to win the 3A Show Cheer Championship last year.
“We didn’t think it (division change) would be that different, but it was,” said junior captain Angela Bullion.
The team finished 26 points behind first-place Tucson Santa Rita, and just 14 points from finishing within the top five, which would have qualified the team for the state championship.
Coaches Keri Olivas and Jasmeet Verma said they hadn’t received a breakdown of the team’s scores, but could not pinpoint any glaring flaws or problems with the performance.
“I think they had everything in their routine to qualify,” Olivas said.
The team was given two minutes and 30 seconds for its performance, which Maricopa split into 30 seconds of dance and approximately a minute each of stunts and cheering.
The team’s routine this year was markedly different from last year, and the team also had a little less than two months to implement the return and ingrain it in both the returning cheerleaders and the new ones.
“Half of our squad is returning varsity and half is not,” Verma said.
Those the cheerleaders were nervous beforehand, both coaches said those nerves went away once the squad hit the floor.
“We were nervous,” Bullion said. “But when we get in front of the crowd we’re completely different. We’re performers.”
Although a second consecutive championship is not in the team’s future, there are still two additional competitions – the Cactus Cup Championship in Phoenix in January and the Sharp International Competition at Knott’s Berry Farm in California in March.
Until January, Bullion said the team will continue to improve its performance by potentially adding more difficulty to the routine, which should help add more points to its score, with a goal of taking first at those competitions.
Not to give any discredit to the team’s most recent results, which Bullion, Olivas and Verma were at least satisfied with the performance.
“I think, honestly, the girls performed to the best of their capabilities,” Verma said. “They did a fantastic job out there.”
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