Cheer keeps winning

By Sam Eggleston

SPORTS WRITER

It's all about great
performances for the Novi Wildcats cheerleading team this winter.

The squad, coached by
Emily Parker, earned a recent second place finish at the Allen Park Invitational, beat Northville in head-to-head competition
and third at the Novi Invitational.

In the Allen Park
Invite, the Wildcats found themselves tied for second place with Wyandotte with 346.6
points after two rounds. The squad buckled down, turning in a strong third
round performance to edge their foes to take sole possession of second.

The squad finished
behind former regional rival and usual state competitor Allen Park.

"Even though Allen Park will not be
in their regional this year, my team looks forward to competing against them
again at the Wyandotte Invite in February," said Parker. "They hope
to improve their round two skill timing in order to close the gap between the
two teams."

Allen
Park finished with 669.80 points while Novi had 619.10 and Wyandotte had 613.60 for
third.

Wildcats pound Mustangs

Closing the gap sure
wasn't a concern last week when the Novi Wildcats bowled over the Northville
Mustangs in a dual meet competition. The two squads went head-to-head and the
Novi cheerleaders came out on top with a
677.5-613.3 performance.

In round one, the
Wildcats earned 192.5 points while picking up 205.5 in the second round.
Round three found Novi getting 279.5 points.

Northville earned
178.5 points in the first round, 169.3 in the second and 265.5 in the third
round.

'Cats third at Novi Invite

The Novi
cheerleading squad took third place in the Novi Invitational two weeks ago
when they took on some of the top teams in the state.

Finishing first was Rochester, currently
ranked first in the state, and second was Southgate Anderson, currently
ranked sixth.

"I am thrilled
with their performance on Saturday," Parker said. "We received the
highest scores so far this season. I am especially pleased with their round
one performance. They scored high on their jumps, which is something that we
have been working to improve."

Novi scored 187.5
points in the first round, while Rochester
scored 196 and Southgate Anderson scored 185.5. It marked the first time in
school history Novi outscored Anderson
in the first round of competition. The Novi
tally also set the high school record for a round one performance.

In round two, Novi
scored 185, well short of Rochester's 211.3
and Anderson's 210.5, which was the same
result in round three, where Novi's 372.5 was far
below Anderson's 396 and Rochester's dominating score of 407.3.

Originally
published January 26, 2006