Friday, March 04, 2005

Serving Greenville, Belding and Montcalm County, Michigan
since 1854.

Sports:

Area competitive cheer teams head for state regionals Saturday

By John Raffel -
Daily News sports editor

Area varsity competitive cheer teams will get their chance to
shine Saturday when they take part in state regional competition.

Belding, Central Montcalm and Tri
County will be in the Class B
competitive cheer meet at Coopersville while Montabella will participate in
the Class C meet at Shelby.
The area's other schools do not have competitive cheer teams.

Action will begin at all regional meets at 10 a.m. The top
two from each regional will advance to the state finals March 12 at the
DeltaPlex in Grand Rapids.

The Class B meet at Coopersville will boast 12 schools
including the area trio. Regional meets will have the same format as regular
season competition. Teams will be judged on how they do in three rounds --
uniform skills in round 1, compulsories in round 2 and stunts and mounts in
round 3.

Central Montcalm Coach Deb Comden said the Coopersville
regional may come down to three teams.

"I'm looking at Chippewa Hills, Sparta
and Comstock Park to have good chances," she
said. "My hope is the girls will have their highest point totals of the
season. All my confidence is in them. We'll be putting together four months
of hard work."

Comden said her team usually does well in the first and second
rounds.

"We've had our ups and downs in round 3," she
said. "I'd like to see the girls bring that round to life
Saturday."

Montabella junior Rebecca Cotes said her team has had its
struggles in its first varsity season but hopes to put together its best
performance at Shelby in a nine-team field
against schools such as Montague, North Muskegon, Pewamo-Westphalia, Saranac,
Shelby, Vermontville Maple
Valley and Wyoming Lee.

"We've improved a lot compared to when we started
out," Cotes said. "We want to go
into Saturday's meet and have our scores go up in rounds 1 and 2, and we want
to improve our round 3 score from last week.

"Our main goal is to have fun and do our best,"
she said. "Most of our rounds have been good. Round 1 has been one of
our better ones