Personal touches will pepper Otsego’s
cheer routines

by Jon Schultz

Friday, December
12, 2008

OTSEGO — When the Otsego competitive cheer team
performs its routines this year, they won’t be using old recycled
material dusted off from a coach’s folder.

Everything from the words they shout to the tumbles they
roll have a touch of personality coming straight
from the girls themselves.

“Usually our coach makes up a lot of the cheer, and
this year knowing the fact that our cheers are what we made up ... our cheers
are about what we feel, what we want to accomplish, what we feel our teams
is,” senior Emily Stack said.

“Instead of coach just putting in all of the effort
and all of us putting it in, it means a lot more to us this year.”

And it’s not that fourth-year coach Nicole Durr’s ideas haven’t worked. The Bulldogs are
defending Wolverine Conference champs, and look to make a third straight
state finals appearance.

District play has been introduced to the competitive cheer
postseason this year, and will provide one more obstacle to make it to the
state finals.

Along the way, the Bulldogs’ new routines will show
their competition what they’re all about.

“The girls played a big part in creating the
material this year, which shows their understanding of what aspects are
needed to develop top-notch performances,” Durr
said.

The end product should prove to be some of the most
exciting routines in recent memory for Otsego, she said.

“All three rounds should be some of the best and
most difficult that Otsego has had in recent years, especially round 2, as
the girls have been working very diligently on their gymnastics
skills,” Durr said. “All rounds will be
very entertaining for our fans.”

Junior Alex Watkins said when brainstorming ideas, the
team tried to keep it “simple but exciting” and “as clean
as possible.”

Stack simply said it’s going to be
“crazy.”

“I think it’s going to be insane. We’re
going to have so much talent this year,” she said. “I think we
will seriously rock out ... we’ll kick butt.”

The Bulldogs return eight letter winners from last year,
and Durr said all the team’s core members
have been on varsity from two to four seasons.

The experienced squad is already making strides in their
first week of practice.

“We’ve already got round one and round two
done,” Stack said. “And round three we’re not having
trouble with at all.”

The team has always had at least some input into the
performance material, but this year they were inspired to step up their
efforts, Watkins said.

“I think a lot of our motivation was our coach,
because she tells us all the time that we’re the ones that have the
skills and she can only coach us so far,” she said. “And we
wanted to show her that we’ve taken a lot of her insight, and that we
care about it just as much as she does.”