State Cheer

By Val Ewing
Winner Area cheer coach

The Winner Area Competitive Cheer team ended their season on Friday, Oct 19 in Rapid City at the State Cheer and Dance Competition. Here are the results and highlights of the last few competitions.

Oct. 14th we competed in Platte at the Platte-Geddes Cheer Pink Invitational. The girls all wore Pink Ribbon shirts in order to support all the people in our community that are currently fighting breast cancer. They were especially aiming though to support one of their fellow cheerleaders, Shelby Scott who’s mother is currently fighting this horrible disease. The girls wanted to give Shelby’s mom Kathy a gift to help her along her journey and they presented it at this competition. The girls did not have the best performance but it solidified the changes we needed to make and the parts of our routine that we needed to work on the week of state.

We traveled to Rapid on Thursday evening. We knew Friday was going to be a long day of hurry up and wait. We had practice scheduled at the Rapid City Gymnastics Gym at 10:00 Friday morning and then went to eat as a team. We arrived at Rapid City Stevens at about 1:30 which gave the girls time to get their hair done before we practiced at 2:15. The coaches had a meeting at 3:30 and then the competition started at 5:00. This year’s competition was unique because a Winner team started it and finished it. Winner Dance kicked it off, going first. We were the final team to compete Friday night. Our routine went really well and all our stunts and changes were great until the end when we had a small glitch in the pyramid. They regrouped though pretty fast and ended it strong. Winner placed 5th in the Large Stunting/Tumbling division and then overall tied for 7th place with Redfield/Doland. There were 20 teams competing. Our score was a 206

Overall I am completely happy with how our season ended. These girls worked super hard to finish the year strong and with bigger and better stunts. We changed things up more than once and there were never any complaints. We have 6 seniors that I am not sure how we are going to replace them. Maddy Hanson has been a competitive cheerleader for 5 years, Macy Olson and Hannah Hanson for 4 years and Macie Ferwerda for 3 years. Their leadership and knowledge really helped us be the team we were this year and next year’s seniors have big shoes to fill. Kaylee Bolton and Elisabeth Duffy were new this year, but both of them jumped right in and did an outstanding job. They both were kind of thrown into things they had little to no experience in, and both did so without complaining. I am super proud of all the girls work ethic and dedication. Some of them had at least 1 other sport they were competing in and they still managed to do a great job. We, as coaches are sad the season is over but are already looking to next year. I want to thank my 2 assistant coaches – Samantha Novotny and Kirstin Livermont for all their help this season. They make coaching a little easier and both have strengths that help make this squad as good as it is.