MV’s cheerleaders took the floor and dominated the competition at their first competition of the year as both the JV and Varsity Rams were awarded first place at the Mount Vernon ICCA Invitational on December 2.

After hard work choreographing and practicing their routines, the rams were successful and qualified for the state ICCA Competition.

“My team had an amazing first performance. It felt awesome to hit a clean routine in front of our home crowd,” said Maggie Turner, ‘20.

“Everyone pushed to be their absolute best and left it all out on the floor,” said Raegan Henry, ‘20.

“I think all the teams that came did an amazing job with their routines, but both of our teams made sure everyone knew that the Rams own Changnon gym,” said Breahna Payne, ‘21.

The team faced adversity when one of their JV members, Madison Shepard, went out with a foot injury. However they persevered as their alternate, Carleigh Campbell, learned the part and competed in her place.

The Rams showed their many strengths and also some weaknesses throughout their performance.

“Our strengths are definitely our tumbling and our jumps. Our JV team has majority tucks which is a level three skill in tumbling. Our jump sequence along with our flexibility helps our jump scores out a lot, and those two things combined definitely make up for our less difficult stunts and boost our scores,” said Allison Jones, ‘20.

“Our strengths were that we all were super encouraging throughout the whole routine and gave our all to the great Lord above. Our weaknesses were some last minute changes we had, and making sure to hit our skills to the best ability,” said Maddie Lane, ‘20.

“I would say being conditioned for the routine was definitely one of our weaknesses, we have such a short amount of time to choreograph our routines and practice them [that] we don’t get much time to condition ourselves for how tiring the routines really are,” added Jones.

The team is excited to move on to their next challenge and compete in the ICCA State Competition.

“[I’m excited] to make some small changes that make our routine better and give our all to see how well we can all do together and hope for the best outcome,” said Lane.

“Of course I’m excited about competing at the next level and hopefully bringing back some hardware but I think I’m most excited for the relationships I build with my team at competition,” Jones said.

“I’m looking forward to being able to see how far our hard work takes us in our next competition,” said Henry.

The Lady Rams will next take the floor at the ICCA State Championships on January 5-6 at the Bank of Springfield Center in Springfield, Illinois.