This has been a great season for Karissa with cheer! She really loves this sport and it shows! She never missed a practice, except when we were on vacation, and loved practicing her routines at home. This was her first year on Varsity. They had a huge squad, 26 girls (more than the football team!), which made it even more fun, especially since last year the JV squad was so small. A bunch will leave next year as they move unto high school, but hopefully it will still be great. With traditions like different themes for practices (pink out, wear your favorite jersey, black out, crazy socks), writing notes to each girl on the squad to read at competition, and the stuffed animal exchange (that actually happens with each squad), its made these girls become closer and really have fun at practice. It helped for when they had some extra practices to prepare for competition or weird times to accommodate different school field trips, volleyball tryouts, and to rearrange the cheer and dance because of injuries 3 days before competition!
Though we lost all of the football games by many points, those cheerleaders always had fun cheering. The ironic thing is, they had their first play off game on Saturday, which everyone gets to play at, no matter how many losses, and our team actually won! But, the cheerleaders had a long practice beforehand to prepare for competition the next day and finalize the changes due to the few injuries, so they decided not to cheer at the game after all (also, it was raining). So, we get to go to the next round of play offs!
At competition, the girls performed so well! Round 1 was the cheer and Round 2 the dance/stunt portion. Rochester took first place in Jr. Freshman, Freshman, and JV and our Steelers took 2nd for all those, but our Varsity took first and Rochester took second in both rounds! Which meant we also got the "best overall" trophy for Varsity. I was so proud of them all and glad their hard work paid off!
One more game this weekend, unless by some miracle we win again. Let's go Steelers!!
Right before they took the mat. Karissa is on the left in the second row, but in front.
Here's the cheer and dance videos. Karissa is on the left for the cheer and on the right for the dance. The far right for the stunts.
Waiting for the results with their stuffed animals from the exchange in the middle and their special gifts bags full of the notes from each other.
So much hard work rewarded! So happy for Karissa!!
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