Neophytes make giant strides
First-year program claims fifth place Saturday
WOONSOCKET – Karen Dickie’s best recollection as to how the North Smithfield/Mount St. Charles competitive cheerleading squad came to be occurred in September of 2015.
“I had overheard some teachers in the hallway at Mount, and they were talking about some boys from Mount would be joining the North Smithfield (High) football team, and I immediately thought about our cheerleaders,” offered Dickie, a co-head coach with her husband, Bill.
“We went to a coaches’ meeting about a month after that, and it took us about a year to organize this co-op team. I remember introducing myself to (mentor) Alisha Heon from North Smithfield, and I asked her, ‘Do you think we can do this?’ She looked at me and said, ‘We sure as heck can!’”
Heon’s brief statement couldn’t have been more correct.
On Saturday afternoon, at about 12:30 at the New England Spirit/Competitive Cheer Championships held at the Providence Career & Technical Academy field house, the Northmen/Mounties
Co-op club discovered they had finished an unfathomable fifth in the Large Division with 165.00 points.
With that final score, the 15-member unit not only outperformed 15 other qualifiers from around the region within that category, but also earned recognition as the premier team in the Ocean State.
Whitman-Hanson (Mass.) collected the Large Division crown with 195.40 points (out of a possible 220), while North Attleboro snatched runner-up honors (188.00); Shawsheen (Mass.) third (179.70); and Joel Barlow High of Connecticut fourth (167.60).
“At the state championships, we finished third in our division, but we were much better at New Englands,” Karen explained. “The routine was just more crisp and tight, and the girls seemed more excited. They sold it better, and were a lot more confident. The girls wanted to represent Rhode Island the best they could, and did they ever!
“We beat the state’s Large Division champ, West Warwick, and also Pilgrim, which finished second at states,” she continued. “When they announced it, I just about died. We were going up against Massachusetts and New Hampshire teams, which are always fabulous, and also were up against the best of the best from the other states.
“For us to finish fifth, it was unbelievable. The kids went crazy, we (as coaches) went crazy. I think they were in shock. We looked at the girls’ faces, and their expressions were, like, ‘What? Fifth?’ It took a second or two for it to register, and they started jumping up and down, going berserk.
“This is only the first year we started training together. It was amazing.”
The Northmen/Mounties achieved that astonishing finish after manufacturing an exhausting 2 -minute, 30-second routine that included stunts, pyramids, tumbling, lifts and dances, all to music.
“In 2015-16, we at Mount fielded a soccer and basketball cheerleading team like we always had, and North Smithfield had its football and basketball squads,” said Karen, whose coaching staff also includes her daughter Brittany (a MSC graduate and former captain of the New England Patriots’ cheerleading contingent, as she was named its dance trainer following Super Bowl LI); Heon; and Kelly McCann of NS.
“We didn’t start training for competitive cheerleading until November, but I knew the chemistry would be good because of the kids’ enthusiasm and willingness to learn,” she added, “and because Bill and I and the other coaches had been doing this for so long. They were like little sponges; they absorbed every- thing we told them.
“The toughest thing we had to overcome was the experience level.”
Stated Bill: “Most of our kids had never competed before. In fact, a majority of the girls had never even done cheerleading for a football team before. We only had five kids who had done either sideline cheerleading or the competition variety. We just taught them, that’s all. We showed them what they needed to do.
“We started with the basic skills, what we call prep-level stunts, then they progressed to extensions, where girls hold other girls over their heads,” he continued. “Once they learned that, we moved to the one-leg lift stunts, then slowly but surely taught them the release moves with inversions and flips.
“We knew beforehand they had the ability to place well at the states and New Englands; however, because of their inexperience in competitive cheering, we didn’t know how they’d perform the skills that were necessary.
“At practices, they hit all the skills, but then they’d get in front of a crowd at a competition setting and the nerves would kick in. They overcame all that at the New Englands.”
When asked his reaction after the results were announced, he laughed, “I still can’t believe it. Each state sends to the New Englands its top three teams in each division, and we were third in our states, but we went out and defeated both West Warwick and Pilgrim.
“Let’s put it this way: We had one bobble in the whole routine on Saturday, and – last week – we had about eight. The girls were so focused, and they put it all together. Before it started, we just told them to try to beat their own score, not to worry about anyone else and what they were doing. They were just about flawless.”
Karen indicated the leap from the Small Division to the Large, which the Mounties previously had done by its lonesome, was another major obstacle.
“Because we became a coop team, we had to go from the small, which encompasses schools with 200-300 girls, to the large, with schools between 500-600,” Karen said. “That’s a huge difference, and more is expected of you. They nailed everything at the regionals.”
The team maintained two senior co-captains, including Leah Tramueller of Mount and Kambry Hansen of NS. Other Mounties on the squad included seniors Grace Boyle and Christine Gardella; and juniors Francesca DeLuca, Amanda Duffy and Maeve Reynolds.
Among those from North Smithfield: Juniors Abby Beachemin, Gianna Paul and Gianna Sarmiento; sopho- mores Brittany Beaudoin and Alexis Thompson; and freshmen Gillian Pepin, Jennifer Cohen, Alex Boutelle and Nicole Connell.