A Winning Weekend
Both Liberty cheer and dance teams take home 1st and 2nd place wins over the weekend
Liberty’s JV Belles are looking forward to competing at the Battle Spirit Competition in Columbia Saturday, Dec. 8th.
December 7, 2018
Both varsity and JV cheer and dance teams took home victories this past weekend at their respective competitions. While cheer went to state at Lindenwood University and the Liberty Belles attended the annual Lindbergh Invitational, first and second place wins reigned across the board. After taking the first place spot at regionals, cheer went on the place 2nd overall at state, stepping up from last year’s 3rd place win and wrapping a great competition season.
Sophomore Meghan Coyle, for whom this season was her first on varsity cheer, describes the satisfaction of taking home a big win after months of hard work.
“When it (the routine) started out, we learned it in May, it changed so much. The entire dance changed, even from regionals to state, we upped difficulty,” Coyle said. “It was a lot of fun, it was something different. I come from a gymnastic background and those routines are less than a minute and a half, so this was a big step up for me.”
In addition to the step up from gymnastics to cheer, Coyle also gained many friendships throughout her first season as a varsity cheerleader.
“I was nervous coming into the season because I’m the ‘baby sophomore’ and it wasn’t a thing before to have sophomores on varsity and I was kinda worried. I had only done one season of cheer before, so I didn’t know as much as everybody else and I was really afraid that I wasn’t gonna fit and I was gonna be judged. And there was one point, I think it was in September, that it just clicked with me that it was family. I hadn’t noticed how much we changed and how much everybody had fit together until that moment and that changed a lot for me,” Coyle said.
“I never anticipated being this close with any of these girls and it’s probably the best thing that’s happened to me in a really long time. I’ve found my place with these girls. Learning about them and cheer, this entire season, growing as a person and as an athlete has been amazing. I’m so lucky.”
On the other hand, with the great start of another season, both varsity and JV Liberty Belles walked away from the Annual Lindbergh Invitational with 1st and 2nd place wins in both jazz and pom categories. While JV takes home 1st place wins in both jazz and pom, as well as a Sportsmanship Award for the JV teams, varsity adds a 2nd place win in pom and a 1st place win in jazz, as well as a Precision Award for Pom, to their trophy case. Both teams improved from last year’s results with JV ranking 3rd in mix and varsity placing 2nd place in jazz.
“I feel like we’ve come a long way, so far, from the beginning of the season and there’s been a lot of improvement and I think we’re off to a really good start,” sophomore Kylie Bernet said. “I hope for only better to come.”
But if there is anything that the Belles look forward to, it’s putting in more hard work with their teammates to place those high wins.
“We are the most close knit friends that Liberty’s dance team has ever had,” junior Delaney Engelhardt said of the famously tight knit varsity Belles. “We work really hard, like lots and lots of hours per week and I feel like we’re underrated as a Liberty sports team, but we manage to bring home the wins.”
Looking ahead to the rest of the season, both varsity and JV teams are heading to Columbia for the Battle Spirit Competition on Saturday, Dec. 15. Both teams will attend respective local competitions before varsity heads off to Universal Dance Association (UDA) Nationals in February.
But as cheer closes off another competition season and dance begins their own, both teams were able to share a winning weekend by taking home top wins for Liberty.
