Thursday, January 20, 2005

Dragons cheer fourth at Oxford Invitational

By Dan Stickradt

Staff
Writer

Featuring
four schools that were tanked or listed as honorable mention in the polls,
the Oxford Invitational lived up to being a sturdy test Saturday in the competitive
cheer world.

Chesaning,
the second-ranked squad in Class B, topped nine other Class A schools
Saturday afternoon to win the annual invite title.

Chesaning
racked up 666.5 points to win going away. Troy Athens,
tied for fifth in the Class A rankings, finished second with 635, Rochester
Stoney Creek (honorable mention Class A) was third at 625.5 and Lake Orion
(No. 7 Class A) was fourth at 621.

Lapeer West
finished fifth (585), followed by Oxford
(555.5), Berkley
(541.5), Port Huron Northern (535.5), Ortonville-Brandon (515) and Lapeer
East (478.5) in the 10-school field.

"I
thought it was a fun invitational," said Nancy DeAvila,
Lake Orion's head coach. "I thought a
lot of the schools looked pretty good for this early in the season."

Chesaning
scored 182.5 points in round one and never looked back, adding on 207.5 more
points in the second round and 276.5 in the final round to win by 31.5
points.

Athens, coached by Stephanie Brosky,
rang up scores of 171, 195, 269, and Stoney Creek,
coached by Trisha Williams, posted scores of 177,
183 and 265.5.

Lake Orion, in its first tournament of the
season, had rounds of 174.5, 191 and 255.5. Host Oxford, led by coach Kristy
Gibson-Marshall, had scores of 166, 165.5 and 224 for its sixth-place total.

"We
were right there, only four behind Stoney Creek and about 15 behind Athens," said DeAvila. "I think in other weeks I would be
disappointed, but we had three injuries, one serious, at practice on Thursday
night and we had three subs learn the routines on Friday. We did very well
considering the circumstances."

"We
had the tournament in two gyms, so we were done by a little
past 1 p.m.," said Gibson-Marshall. "The tournament went
great."

"For Oxford, though, it was
a train wreck. We're going to go back at it and work on improving in a lot of
areas. We had (mistakes) in all three rounds."

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