By Michelle Huang | Staff Writer

Irvington cheerleading placed fourth out of five teams at their second regional competition at James Logan High School, which was held on Dec. 13th. The team competed in the category “Medium Varsity Show Cheer Novice.”

Irvington’s cheerleaders performed a strong routine. They hit all of their stunts without a single fall, which is not an easy feat by any means. Unfortunately, in the category that they compete in, the size of the teams restricts the kinds of routines that they can put together. Since different stunts require varying amounts of people, there is a limited number of stunts that teams can perform. This limits the variation between the teams’ routines, which makes it difficult to differentiate between different schools’ performances when all of the teams perform well.

“It’s just a really tough category and everybody else did just a touch better than us. We didn’t have any stunts falls, which is really good. It’s just no one else except one team had any falls either,” said junior cheerleader Allison Tietz.

“Cheerleading is a subjective sport. The judges particularly wanted a little bit more, and we also were the first to perform, and I think they had really high standards because our first place kind of made us a well-known team. They just had really high standards for us, which is a great thing because it’s something you can keep working on to achieve,” said co-coach Lauren Mattingly.

Nonetheless, since the team earned enough points at their previous competition to qualify for Nationals, their performance at Logan doesn’t pose a setback.

“Regionals is fun, and we see it as fun and practice, because that’s basically it at this point. We’re more focused on how we’re going to do at States and Nationals,” said Mattingly.

The team’s next competition will be at Deer Valley High School in Antioch on Jan 16th.