Serving Greenville, Belding and Montcalm County, Michigan
since 1854.

Competitive cheer season will open with Central
Montcalm invitational

Thursday, January
4, 2007

By John Raffel - Daily News sports
editor

Area competitive cheer
teams will begin their 2007 seasons Saturday with Central
Montcalm’s
annual Hornet Invitational.

Belding and Vestaburg
will be among the other teams joining Central Montcalm
for the meet. Also scheduled to come are Alma,
Breckenridge, Farwell, Fremont, Fruitport,
Merrill, Ovid-Elsie, Onaway, Portland, St. Charles and St.
Louis.

“This will be the
first tournament for the season for a lot of the teams attending,” said
Central Montcalm Cheer Coach Deb Comden.
“This will give the teams their first set of scores. It's a pretty even
tournament teamwise and any of the teams could come
off with the win.

“We have been
working extremely hard on our routines,” she said. “I feel this
team is ready for the season to begin. Our Round 1 (required moves round) and
Round 2 (compulsories round) will be our strongest at this point, and as for
Round 3 (open round) we will have to see what the girls can do with
it.”

Competition will get under
way at 10 a.m.

“Overall it
should be a great day of competition and a great start to the new
season,” Comden said. “We are looking
for a full day of fun and excitement as we kick off the season.”

Belding will follow up
Saturday’s competition with its own invitational next Wednesday. Central Montcalm will be among the Redskins’
guests.

Belding Coach Stacy Venneman said she’ll use Saturday’s meet to
get ready for next week’s event at Redskin Arena.

“We do have a few
girls out due to injuries,” Venneman said.
“In fact, (Wednesday night) I had a mother who said her
daughter’s doctor said she shouldn’t compete on Saturday.”

Minus the injuries,
“I feel we’ll have a good team,” she said. “We had
nine girls on the team last year and lost seven of them to graduation. We
only have two returning so we’re a fairly new team.”