Cougars on top of pyramid
Welland Centennial caps off undefeated year with national cheerleading title
The Welland Centennial Secondary School Cougars cheerleading team has choreographed its first undefeated season in the school’s history.
The 20-member squad had 11 rookies and only one graduating senior in a season that saw the Cougars win four competitions, including a provincial title in late February and a national title earlier this month.
Team captain and lone senior, Brittany Hanson said this year’s team feels more like a family than anything else.
“It was a lot of fun,” Hanson said. “We were a big family this year, closer than the past couple of year and I think that helped up win.”
The national championships were held at the Scotiabank Centre in Niagara Falls. Teams had two and a half minutes to perform their routines and impress a panel of judges.
Centennial competed in the small senior double A novice category against 11 other teams from across the country.
Routines were performed twice and the best average scores were used to determine the winner. The Cougars scored a 74.8 on opening day to position themselves well to close out the competition.
Hanson said the hardest trick the team had to pull off was the pyramid. The speed and accuracy involved in performing a pyramid is amplified with such a short routine time. The team had roughly 30 seconds to form and complete the acrobatic feat.
The Cougars carried a one-point lead headed into the finals on Saturday before capping off their perfect season with an even better run on the second day. Centennial narrowly defeated Ecole Saint-Laurent of Quebec and Regiopolis Notre Dame Catholic High School from Kingston.
All three teams finished within a point and a half of each other, with the Cougars winning it all with 75.36 total points.
“We’ve won a few competitions the last couple of years, but none this big,” Hanson said. “I think having so much trust in the team is the hardest thing. This year it just came about so easily.”
The Cougars relied on their strong choreography and their well-timed jumps. In the jumps and tosses category they scored best in their division, 17; 16.7 in rounds one and two, respectively. In the end, it wasn’t their overwhelming success that brought home the gold, it was their consistency and willingness to rely on one another.
Hanson is in her final year at Centennial and will pass the torch to a relatively young group looking to prove they’re here to stay. Her coaches, Brittany Blasioli and Nikki Napper, have credited Hanson with taking on the leadership role given to her.
“In all the years we’ve been doing this, we find that the years we have a strong senior leading the team are the most successful years,” Blasioli said. “We thank her for the success of the team.”
Blasioli said the pace of the tournament was intense, and with teams from Quebec participating and it made for an all-around tougher experience. Schools from Quebec have cheerleading in their curriculum, meaning teens can take the sport as a subject.
In the face of that kind of adversity, the Cougars still managed to pull off the unthinkable.
“The competition, especially coming from Quebec is pretty incredible,” Blasioli said. “They’re sweeping every division and winning everything.
“So, for us, being an Ontario school, it’s an even bigger deal. We’ve never won against the Quebec teams.”
Napper and Blasioli have been coaching the cheer team at school for the last 10 seasons. They won one of their three national championships with Centennial in 2006, when they were on the front lines as cheerleaders themselves. They are proud of their teams. “This season I think we were expecting not to do well, we had 11 rookies on the team,” Blasioli said. “It feels pretty good, we’re so proud of them.”
They use a laid-back approach to coach the team. After nationals, they brought the students to an arcade on Clifton Hill as a way to thank them for all their hard work. They said relationships like that are what make a cheerleading team go from good to great.
The team will hold tryouts for next year’s team in the coming weeks.