Division meet leaves teams little to cheer about

Originally published January 12, 2007

By Jonathan Bardelline

Photo by David Reed

Ferndale High
School's competitive cheerleading team does the splits at
Tuesday's division meet. Their performance earned them fourth place out of
six teams.

Photo by David Reed

Carly Jienkiewicz
of Berkley High School gives a yell during a recent cheerleading meet at Ferndale High School. Berkley's squad placed third out of the
six teams at the meet.

FERNDALE -- Local competitive
cheerleading teams don't have much to cheer about after the division meet Tuesday. Berkley
placed highest at third, followed by Ferndale
in fourth and Royal Oak
in sixth.

The OAA league
Division III competitive cheerleading meet was Jan. 9 and included six teams:
Berkley, Ferndale,
Royal Oak, North Farmington, Farmington High
and Harrison.

"It's
still fairly early in the season, so we're working on trying to get the right
items in the cheers to get us the most points," said Berkley coach Karen Wozniczka.
The competitive cheerleading season runs until March.

She attributed
her team's placing to the fact that they did not have a full cheer for the
open cheer round, which typically includes more stunts and non-mandatory
moves than the required and compulsory cheers.

Wozniczka has been a cheerleading coach for six years (two at Berkley) and seen the
skill level of teams steadily increase.

"You are needing to have harder skills and do more gymnastic
skills to do better at the competitions," she said.

Royal Oak, which came in last
place, did not perform an open cheer.

"We
haven't completed our round three (open cheer) completely," said coach Autum Alioto. "I didn't
want any of my girls to get injured."

After more
practice, the team should have its open cheer ready for a Jan. 29 competition
at Berkley.

Alioto said the recent merger of Dondero and Kimball high
schools to form Royal Oak
High School did not
affect the competitive cheer team because it had included girls from both
schools for the past three years.

The team
scores were: North Farmington, 555.5 points; Farmington High, 544.6; Berkley, 531.7; Ferndale,
525.5; Harrison, 464.2; and Royal
Oak, 250.