For the second year in a row, the cheer team placed first in their division at the county championship at Montgomery Blair High School this Saturday. The success came after months of intense rehearsing to perfect their routine.

Counties is the highest level that the Whitman team competes at and their performance  determines the squad’s division for the next year. The competition is separated into three divisions, with either eight or nine schools in each; however, the judging criteria and expectations are the same for all teams.

“Each school brings a two and a half minute to three minute routine that consists of partner stunts, pyramids, tumbling, usually a dance component, and they’re scored by the judges based on a score sheet that’s already been created by the county,” said Suzy Johnson, county Cheerleading Sport Director and Whitman social studies resource teacher.

While the team has been preparing their Counties choreography since the beginning of the season and has done smaller versions of their stunts at football games, this was their first time performing the routine in its entirety.

“We did a rough version of it for the pep rally and then gradually switched in more complicated stunts and choreography to make the final competition routine,” senior cheerleader Juliet Burns said.

At the competition, teams are scored by a panel of ten judges on fundamental skills, difficulty of the routine, choreography and execution, and tumbling components. Two of the judges focus only on safety, deducting points if the stunts don’t meet cheer safety guidelines, while two other judges score based only on the difficulty of the routine. From the six other judges, the highest and lowest scores are dropped, and an average score is calculated from the remaining four.

After watching all eight other Division 3 teams’ performances and keeping the Whitman fans excited between routines, the team finally took the floor. Overall, the performance was a success, coach Kristi McAleese said.

“I think the team knew that they had a lot riding on this performance, and so there was a lot of pressure on them and they really did really, really well performing outside of that pressure,” McAleese said. “When little mistakes happened, they didn’t let that get to them—they recovered really well.”

The team’s win followed last year’s first place finish, which was the first time the squad had ever come in first—just two years after the team made history by just placing in the competition. Saturday’s win was especially gratifying because of the team’s recent progress, senior captain Colleen Cullinane said.

“After all the tears, blood and strains, I was so proud to say that we had won our division for a second year in a row,” she said.

As a result of winning two years in a row, the team is expected to move up to Division 2 next year, though nothing will be official until the coach’s meeting at the end of the season around March.

“Generally speaking, what happens is the top two teams that have averaged the highest points in the past two years move up, and then the two lowest teams move down,” McAleese said.

Cheerleaders said they were thrilled at the chance to move to a more competitive division; however, McAleese said her expectations for the team will stay the same.

“We go out there with a clean routine, we perform to the best of our ability,” she said. “As a coach, that’s all you can really ask for—you can only set up your team for success.”