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| CSULB Cheer Team Is Victorious At National Championship | ||||||
| The CSULB all-girl cheer team took home the gold in the United Spirit Association's Collegiate National Championships held on March 1, in Las Vegas, Nev., which featured over sixty teams from across the United States competing for the title. | ||||||
| Out of the total sixty-five teams that went to the competition, eleven made it to the preliminaries, while a select six went all the way to the finals, CSULB included. In the end, however, no team could beat out the cheerleaders from Long Beach. | ||||||
| The entire team is composed of a competitive all-girl section and a co-ed section that also won the gold at the championship and can usually be found cheering at volleyball and basketball home games, but often travels to compete in competitions, both regional and national. | ||||||
| Katherine Covellone, a junior journalism student and first-year cheer squad member, feels a connection with all of the other girls and believes this was an important part in their victory. "The biggest thing about us winning," Covellone said, "is that we are a very bonded team, we help each other, we encourage each other, and we are very close." She also noted that the team strives for "perfection and excellence," and tries to "perfect everything and keep everything coordinated and clean." | ||||||
| The championship was Covellone's first college competition, but she "knew [the team] would make it to finals." According to Covellone, the team excelled in the preliminaries, having the second highest score among the eleven that made it that far. "Everyone on the team wanted to do well and we were all very excited and happy to be there," Covellone said, especially coaches Eric Anderson and Glen Tamura who saw both their teams win. | ||||||
| Shannon Stotz, a senior health science major and captain of the all-girl cheer team, said that her team had the competition "in the bag." "The crowd really responded well to our team and we had a standing ovation. Everyone came to see Long Beach State on day two and we set the standard," Stotz said, noting that the team was "a whole level above everyone else." | ||||||
| The team practices two days a week and runs a mile each time, which helps to keep up the members' endurance levels. "We always have to be in tip-top shape," Stotz said, and she knew that if they "practiced like champions" they "would be champions." Coach Anderson developed the national championship routine, and according to Stotz, it was good enough to get first place. | ||||||
| Stotz, who loves cheerleading and lives for it, believes that CSULB has really made a name for itself over the past two years in cheerleading, and said that some freshmen even look for cheerleading colleges as criteria when deciding on a school to attend. For cheerleading, Stotz said, "CSULB is the best." | ||||||
| The cheer team often holds cheerleading clinics in the summer as well as fundraisers throughout the year, and they hope to go to the National Cheerleaders Association College Nationals in Daytona Beach, Fla., where over one hundred of the best teams in the nation will compete. | ||||||
| Copyright Gerry Wachovsky, 2004, and Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. | ||||||
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