Colon
struggles in late rounds, takes 6th

Cris Greer | Special to the Gazette, March 7, 2009

GRAND
RAPIDS — Perfection is tough to come by, and it was a goal that Colon’s competitive cheer team
fell short of Saturday in the Division 4 state finals.

The Magi finished sixth
among eight teams with a total of 698.4 points at the DeltaPlex.

Michigan Center won the crown with 759.9 points,
followed by Hudson, Ithaca, Pewamo-Westphalia, Manistique, Colon, Laingsburg and Norway.

“Our goal today was
to put our three best rounds on the mat, and I feel that our round one was
really good, round two we had a couple of mistakes and round three was not
our best,” said Colon coach Jayne Sabaitis,
whose team placed third last year. “We fell a little short of our goal
of three perfect rounds, but the girls had a lot of fun and did everything
that they could do.

“I thought we were
going to be top three again, but we just didn’t perform like we did
last week at regionals — probably our best
performance of the year.”

Senior captain Rachel
Green said that the Magi didn’t quite measure up to their expectations.

“To be completely
honest, I feel like we could have done better than what we did,” Green
said. “We all expected to do better.”

Chante’ Harris, Colon’s other senior captain,
agreed.

“Our round three
was kind of comical,” she said.

Peforming with eight girls on the floor
each round, Colon was one of the smallest teams at
the state finals, less than half the size of Michigan Center and Hudson.