On Saturday, Dec. 1, the JV and varsity cheerleading squads traveled to Tampa to compete in their first competition of the season. Both teams earned national bids in both their Game Day and Competition cheers as JV won their Game Day division and varsity placed second in their Game Day division. Both teams placed second with their Comp. routines.

The varsity Comp. routine consisted of stunts and tumbling lines and a pyramid to finish, and they managed to have only a few mistakes. The team placed second to Bartram Trail, who consistently has one of the best cheer programs in the state, but the cheerleaders are not too concerned about this one competition.

“We did pretty good overall considering it was our first competition,” junior Camilla Pagan said. “We need to work on our tightness and how clean we are.”

This competition is the first of many for this season, including one on Wednesday, Dec. 5 at the Masters Academy and another competition that Saturday at Bishop Moore. That rigorous schedule is put in place to get the team as much experience as possible as they head into states and nationals.

“This week has been stressful,” senior Jesse Vaughn said. “We added a lot of more stunts to make our routine harder but hopefully it will help us score more points.”

The team is also competing in so many competitions because they need to be at, at least four in order to be eligible for the state championship, which they have won for the past four years.

Neither team is in top form right now but they trust that by the end of the season they will be.

“I feel like we will be pretty good at the end of the season we just need to figure everything out with our routine,” Pagan said.