On Saturday, January 11, the Riverside Brookfield High School varsity competitive cheer team placed third out of eight teams at the Charger Classic Competition held at Dundee Crown High School. The RB team scored 82 points, their best score all year.
This marks RB’s first time placing top three in a competition this season. The Bulldogs are gaining momentum at the right time, with the Upstate Eight Conference championship meet scheduled to take place on Wednesday, January 22 at Bartlett High School. Sectionals will be February 1, with the top five teams at sectionals qualifying for state February 7-8.
“Since I’ve been a coach, we have not come home with a trophy yet,” varsity head coach Lauren Vara said. “That felt really good as a coach, and I know for the athletes it felt really good. It is definitely a good confidence booster. We’re in a division that’s really challenging, so to place highly in a competition helped the athletes believe in themselves a little bit more and know that it’s possible. Hopefully it’s kind of like a fire that’s lit and keeps burning until the end of our season.”
In recent years, RB’s competitive cheer program has been becoming more and more well known, with more and more people joining each year. This has helped to establish RB’s name in the competitive cheer world.
“Usually it’s the same teams over and over, kind of like other sports where you hear their names over and over,” Vara said. “It’s really the first time RB has been in the top three in any competition we’ve been in. The fact that we were able to be in the top three was pretty great.”
Throughout the season, which starts in June, the athletes have improved greatly. Improvement is shown through the team’s scores, which were in the 70s at the start of the season and improved to 82 this past meet.
“We’ve been doing a lot of clinics, and we’ve been doing a lot of little things that we weren’t focusing on before, and we’re all learning how to take initiative and grow,” senior Mikayla Biggerstaff said. “It means that we have definitely grown, and it means that there’s more connection with our team.”
A challenge that the team has had to deal with over the offseason was a loss of senior leadership. Many athletes had to step up to fill gaps left by last year’s senior class and establish community.
“It’s a brand new team,” Vara said. “We lost 10 seniors, so we’ve built from the bottom. Our season starts in June and goes until February, so we’ve been with each other all year. They’re a really great group of athletes that care about each other and lift each other up. I think it makes all the difference when you have that sense of trust and family feeling.”
While the connection within the team and the scores have changed, the end-of-season goal remains the same: qualify for the state competition at Grossinger Motors Arena in Bloomington-Normal.
“I’m looking forward to everyone putting forth their all and trying their hardest because it’s my last year, and I would like to make it to state,” Biggerstaff said. “We all have the same goal in mind, so I think that’s really helpful. I think that it helps when everyone’s focused.”
