It’s
back-to-back state championships for Carlson cheerleaders

By Hank Minckiewicz, Wednesday,
March 4, 2009

The Carlson cheerleading
team capped a great season with a second straight Michigan High School
Athletic Associa-tion Division 2 state championship in Grand Rapids Saturday.

The Marauders domi-nated the Division 2
com-petition, winning each of the three rounds and scor-ing
807.1184 points.

Carlson’s point total was the second highest in the state finals
regardless of division. Only Division 1 Rochester (811.2480) scored higher.

The win capped a season that saw the Marauders win numerous tourna-ments, including the league championship and their
state district and re-gional.

In
all, Carlson won nine of the 10 competitions it entered this season. In the
only competition it did not win, it finished second by ½ point to its chief local rival, Allen Park.

Allen
Park, which was socked with a two-point penalty in the third round,
finished fifth in the eight-team state competition with 777.7568 points.

At Saturday’s finals, hosted by Grand Rapids’ DeltaPlex, the Marauders
scored 233.2 points in the first round to finish com-fortably
ahead of eventual state runner-up Mount Pleasant. The Marauders wound up beating
the Ag-gies by 21.0296 points.

Carlson Coach Christina Wilson called it “a fantas-tic
season.”

“From the start of this season, our girls had one thing in mind –
the state championship,” she said. “They really wanted the
‘post-season sweep,’ win-ning the
league, district, regional and state compe-titions
and that’s just what they did.

“We are so proud of them and they are so proud of themselves. They are good
kids and a great team.”

And the Marauders don’t appear to be ready to sit on their laurels just
yet. Last year’s state-championship team had no seniors and this
year’s has just four. The bulk of the team is currently made up of
freshmen and sopho-mores.

“The kids we get from our middle school team at Shumate are so good,
it’s unbelievable,” Wilson said. “It’s a great
luxury to work with kids with such a great grasp of fundamen-tals.

“By the time they get to us they are already so good that we can work
on extra flourishes.”

Wilson said Lindsey Sturgill
and Marissa Mou-souleas are the Shumate coaches.

The champion Maraud-ers are seniors Delayna Herndon, Sara Jokela,
Ra-chel Sarkody and Megan
Zander; juniors Chantelle
Baron, Rebecca Cleary, Courtney McCarary and Lainey Williams; sopho-mores
Desiree Baron, Shelby Branham, Jessica Dhans, Bailee Gregg, Lisa Lewis and Halee
Stratton; and freshmen Paige Ar-rington, Kim Desimpe-laere, Courtney Gibson, Alisha Hixon, LeAnne Jacobs, Kayla Sharlow, Lindsay Smith, Carly
Williams. Danielle Jokela is the co-coach along
with Wilson.

In Division 3, Comstock Park was the winner and Grosse Ile won
a hard-fought battle for second place.

The second through fifth place teams in that divi-sion
all scored in the 750s with Grosse Ile nabbing second with a score of
758.2496.

The Division 1 competi-tion was this year’s
tough-est with three teams reaching the 800-point
level.

Rochester’s 811.2438 was the highest score in the entire competition.

Anderson finished fifth in that division
with a score of 788.7856.