The Jesup High School Cheerleaders earned two trophies in State Cheerleading Competition at HyVee Hall in Des Moines November 6. They brought home mega trophies, a 5th-place trophy for 5-Person Stunt and a 3rd-place trophy for Small Team competition.
The routine that garnered a 3rd-place win was learned almost entirely from scratch in just three days prior to competition!
“Small Team is for schools that cheer with eight girls or less,” explained JHS Cheer Coach Jeni Wyant. “It’s meant for small schools to compete.
“It’s a 2-1/2 minute routine with constant cheers, stunts, jumps and tumbling. We competed against 15 schools and took third place!”
Wyant explained that the girls had practiced a routine since August, thinking it would be less stressful at State Competition time to use the same routine that they had practiced for Homecoming.
When the girls performed at Exhibition at Cedar Falls High School the week prior to State, their evaluation was “kind of low.”
“We came in on Monday and talked about what we could do to make this better,” said Wyant about the routine they’d been practicing for months. “We revamped the entire tumbling sequence.”
She explained that the tumbling included back handsprings, forward rolls, and back tucks.
On Tuesday, the cheers were improved, and on Wednesday, they revamped all the music. Finally on Thursday, more complicated stunts were integrated into the program, retaining the beginning stunt and the pyramid in the middle of the routine.
“The girls basically learned a whole new eight-count dance on Friday,” Wyant said. “They pulled off a third place! The girls call it ‘third place in three days.’”
The cheerleaders in Small Team were Taylor Boies, Jessica DuBois, Kelsie White, Blair Morris, Skylar Clayton, Kayla Rummans and Kelliann Frush.
These same cheerleaders, with the exception of Kayla and Kelliann, performed the 5-Person Stunt. This competition is a full minute of constant stunts to music. There were 11 teams competing.
Wyant praises and credits her assistant coach Tara Murphy for all her work and ideas in helping get the Jesup cheerleaders so far in competition.
“She’s been cheering since she was in third grade and has competed on many cheer squads [at different levels],” said Wyant about Murphy. “She works for the National Cheer Academy. Her contract (for JHS) is from November through March, but she volunteered her time to help us out. Without her, I don’t know how I’d have pulled it off this year.”
The Jesup cheerleaders practice two hours every single night, with five of the girls practicing two routines back-to-back. They do conditioning throughout the summer three nights a week, as well.
“They make it look easy,” said Wyant about the stunts, “because they have two-hour practices, doing their routines up to three times.”
This is the third year of State competition for the JHS cheerleaders, and they have brought home three trophies and two plaques, ranging from 1st through 6th places.
Trophy News From Crosby, TORONTO
