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

Central Montcalm
takes second at own cheer meet

■ Tri County third in Division 1 and Montabella fourth in Division 2

BY CHIP BURCH

DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

STANTON — Two heavy hitters
in competitive cheer put on a good show at Wednesday’s Green Hornet
Invitational.

Oh, and
they won too.

Lake Odessa
Lakewood captured Division 1 with 644.1 points, outdistancing host Central Montcalm, which had a score of 580.6. Tri County
finished third with 469.9 points when Shepherd was penalized 21 points in
Round 3 and finished fourth.

Meanwhile,
Breckenridge, which has won five of the last six Class C-D state titles, put
on a clinic in Division 2 where it prevailed with 716.6 points, well ahead of
second- place Saranac (572), third-place Ithaca (522.3) and fourth- place Montabella
(399.5).

Central
Montcalm Coach Deb Comden figured her team would
finish second behind Lake Odessa Lakewood. However, she wasn’t counting
on a second - round score of 159.1.

“Round 2
has always been a weak one for us,” Comden
said. “We made some changes but we still have to work on it.” She
said she’ll continue to get her team ready for regionals.

“We have another
competition Wednesday (at Chippewa Hills) so Round 2 is what we’ll
focus on,” Comden said. “All in all our
points went up.” Tri
County finished third
after losing 10 points in Round 3. Seven of those were for having a “hole” (missing person) on the floor.

“It’s not a normal
performance with us having a couple girls out,” said Viking Coach
Jennifer Laskey.

Tri County
also lost 14 points in Round 2 on penalties.

“We’ve been scoring close
to 540 in other competitions,” Laskey said. “ This was a low-scoring competition for us.”
She said she’ll work on her team’s psyche during coming
practices.

“Probably the
biggest thing is confidence,” Laskey  said. “The girls need to believe they can do
it.” Montabella finished ahead of only four-cheerleader St. Louis in Division 2.

The Mustangs helped make
the score closer than they would have liked by having 14 penalty points taken
away in each of the final two rounds.

The Round 2 penalty was
for having a girl not perform the precision drill and the third round
deduction was for incorrect spot-ting.

“I thought we did a good job, doing a lot better each week,”  Montabella Coach Andrea Coopshaw
said.

The penalty points hurt, “but
it’s something we can work on in practice,” she said.

“We’re going to get the
penalty points taken away and do harder stuff for Chippewa Hills,” said
Coopshaw.