Even early in the season, varsity cheerleaders were confident about their prospects for the upcoming year.
“We knew we would do better than usual,” senior Allie Degregorio said.
The team even hoped to make it to the regional competition.
“We all knew that we had a chance [to make regionals] this year,” junior Jazmin Pettiford said.
The unprecedented success of placing third at the district level on Oct. 23, securing them a place at the regional competition, was thrilling in its own right.
“I was so excited. It’s the first time Marshall [cheer] has been at any place above sixth,” junior Rachel Edison said.
But it was far from the only good news the team received. On Nov. 2, they placed ninth at the regional competition at Mount Vernon High School.
The results were not without a great deal of determination and work by the team.
“Sometimes practice is really hard, especially around competition time,” sophomore Annie Cowman said.
Edison especially noted the difficulty presented by the necessity of teamwork in cheerleading.
“The way that cheerleading works is that you’re not competing individually; you’re competing as a team,” Edison said. “Sometimes it can be frustrating, being in a group and one person not exactly doing the right thing.”
For Degregorio, the squad’s accomplishments represented a triumph over the still-pervasive idea that cheerleading is less demanding than other sports.
“It’s actually a lot of work physically, and people don’t think it is. You have to put in a lot of time and effort,” Degregorio said. “It’s really annoying, actually, that everyone thinks, oh…you guys don’t really do anything.”
The squad is also a close-knit community.
“The whole team aspect is fun, and [so is] getting to know more people,” Cowman said.
Degregorio attributes the team’s success to this sense of closeness.
“We really came together as one,” Degregorio said. “I know that sounds really cliché, but we did.”