Last weekend, the Bob Jones Competition Cheerleading team traveled to Orlando, Florida to compete in the UCA National High School Cheerleading Championship. This competition marked the end of an amazing season the girls had.

This was a long and hard season for the girls. They started off strong with a regional and state championship, but one of the flyers on the team, Ashlyn Davenport, broke her hand three weeks before nationals which called for a lot of changes. First, the coach wanted to go small to decrease the number of stunt groups, but that option did not work out. So, another cheerleader, Brooke Stevens, stepped in and replaced her in the stunt and did an amazing job. Ashlyn explained, “I’m glad they were able to work around what happened to me and succeed at both the showcase and nationals.”

The day before the girls left for Orlando, they put on a showcase to show family and friends at Bob Jones their national routine. The showcase went well and the team was very excited to go to Orlando and compete. After a full day of practicing on Thursday, the girls competed at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports complex. This was the preliminary competition. When they performed, there were a few mistakes that were made, but their routine was still impressive. They qualified for the semi-final competition the next day. However, they had to make many changes to their routine before competing because the judges had many different suggestions.

At semifinals, they performed their newly fixed routine after adapting to the array of changes suggested by the judges. They did amazing and advanced in the finals. They had a clean routine, there were a few mistakes but they overall had a successful performance. They placed 8th place out of 96 very talented teams from all over the country. This season, they had the most difficult routine and talented competition than all the years before. Next year, they will have an even more difficult routine.

If you’re interested in trying out for next season, make sure to look out for any news regarding the tryout packet and tryout dates. They will be sometime in March.