The Hollister Vikings junior midgets cheer squad ended its season Saturday with a great performance at Walt Disney World in Florida to earn a ninth-place finish at the junior midget intermediate level national championships.
The Vikings ruled the air with many high-flying stunts and tosses, but lost because other teams performed many more stunts on the ground, including tumbling, cartwheels and handsprings.
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“The girls cheered their hearts out and every stunt went off perfectly, but we just didn’t have as many tumblers as some of the other teams,” said 12th-year assistant cheer coach Sherry Reynolds, who is retiring after coaching the Vikings since 2000.
At the championships, the squad competed against a full slate of sixteen teams. The competition was the conclusion of a long road for the Vikings.
To earn a sport in the championships, the team had to showcase a two minute and thirty second routine at the regional level. They must do the same at the championship.
For head coach Pepper Soto, the team’s performance of the routine was the best they had done all year.”A lot of the girls were disappointed with the ninth-place finish,” Soto said, “but I reminded them that this means they are ninth-best of all the teams in the nation at their level, not just out of the sixteen that are here.”
