‘Genuine’
performance thrills Otsego

Saturday, January 31, 2009

The Kalamazoo Gazette

By Jon Schultz

OTSEGO — Despite earning season highs in
all three rounds of the Bulldog Classic on Saturday, Otsego competitive cheer
coach Nicole Durr was more interested in the words written on the scorecards
than the actual numbers.

A couple judges penciled
in the comment “genuine,” which in itself was a victory for Durr,
as she has been trying to get her girls to cheer with some conviction.

“That’s been
our theme at practice is to just let it all go,” Durr said of her team,
which finished first in Division 3 with a score of 737.7776 (218.2, 215.4776,
304.1). “They’ve got the technical stuff
down, and now they’re adding the emotion into it.”

Shelby placed second with a score of
686.276 (206.8, 194.176, 285.3), and Paw Paw took third with 630.6 points
(183.4, 167.8, 279.4).

In Division 4,
Bloomingdale made a statement of its own, taking home first place with a
score of 607.6388 (180.1, 153.3388, 274.2). Hartford placed second with 505.3344
points (148.2, 116.5344, 240.6), and Martin took third with a score of
450.9096 (141.5, 116.2096, 205.2).

The flu bug hit the
Cardinals this past week, and Bloomingdale coach Ronda Cogswell had doubts
about how her team would cope.

“We totally
replaced one person in all three rounds,” Cogswell said. “It came
out as a pleasant surprise. The girls worked really hard these past two days
to fill in the holes.”

The win was
Bloomingdale’s third victory of the season.

In the combined
competition for Divisions 1 and 2, Mattawan placed second (660.902; 195.6,
210.302, 271) behind St. Joseph (717.156; 215.9, 209.256, 292).

After the medals ceremony,
Otsego senior Chelsie Johnson goofed around with her teammates, as she wore
gigantic gag sunglasses with orange frames and blue lenses.

Less than an hour before,
her lightheartedness was replaced with intensity as she stood alongside those
same teammates during a round-two routine, hands on their hips, bent forward
and shaking their heads while shouting “Oh, yeah? Take that!”
During their next routine, they took it a step further, announcing in unison
“It’s us you fear!”

While normally their
coach would have scripted the words in their routines, Durr passed that duty
on to the girls themselves this season.

“Each of us put in
words to make up our own words, so this is really our cheer,” Johnson
said. “It’s from our hearts and everything we say, it pushes us
harder.”

With six wins under their
belt and a No. 6 ranking in Division 3, the Bulldogs are starting to gain
some swagger — something Durr said the team lacked last season.

“We were very good
last year, but the girls didn’t take on the attitude that they could be
the best, so one of our points this year was to really realize that
it’s OK to be good,” she said. “We just really are
concentrating on (being) the team to beat, the team to watch out for.”