KANE — The Kane Area High School cheerleading team went to the Champion Cheer Central Red Hot Cheer and Dance Championships at Clarion University and come home with two second place finishes.
The team finished second in both the Varsity Non-Tumble Division and the Large Varsity Division.
“Although we are happy with the two second place finishes, we are much better than what we put on the floor on Sunday,” said coach Chris Niklaus. “We had multiple drops in our non-tumble routine and were penalized 2.75 points and lost that division by 5 tenths. One less drop and we win easily. In the large division, we lost by 7 tenths with no drops, but multiple bobbles and missed skills in the air.
“The staff and team doesn’t like to make excuses for poor performances as the judges don’t care — they evaluate what they see,” said Niklaus. “The team was struggling with some things outside of cheer and we will hopefully put this behind us as it definitely impacted both performances on Sunday.”
Niklaus said he hopes the rough stretch is behind the squad and they can get back to business this week with some much-needed practice days before traveling to the Warren YMCA Extreme Competition this Saturday.
