Lining up in their positions, the competition cheer team set off on their final performance of the season at states. On Feb. 1, the team competed at  University of Florida in Gainesville, scoring second place in the Medium Division 2 Non-tumbling category. Leading up to the state competition, the team competed in regionals and took second place which sent them straight to finals for states according to Malesa Zullo (‘23).

“We worked our butts of just to hopefully score a high place because we’ve never gone straight to states before. We’ve never made it in second place at states before, so we were super happy to be there,” Zullo said.

This ended Taylor Cook (‘22)’s 12th season of cheer and her first season as captain. Cook led her team along with Hailey Dolen (‘22) from regionals to states.

“To get second place at states it took a lot of preparation. We watched our last performances and cleaned up every little imperfection we saw. We practiced twice a week doing full out after full out. We were super hungry to win, so we did everything in our power to put out our best performance,” Cook said.

Going into the competition, the team prepared for two weeks knowing what they were going to need to do to achieve the best score. With their practice to improve their stunts, voices, and performance they made school history with the highest score yet at states.

“They score our routine based on the difficulty of our stunts, how well we perform our stunts, based on our cheer, and how  loud we were,” Dolen said.

After deciding not to continue onto the nationals, their state competition marks the last of the season.  Continuing into the next school year cheerleaders will start the season up again in the football season