Gaylord competitive cheer continues to improve, places third overall in St. John's
ST. JOHNS ― No matter the sport, coaches across high school athletics have to find the strengths and weaknesses of each new team they are in charge of.
Sometimes, athletes need more help with the fundamentals to be able to compete at the varsity level. Other times, athletes come in with the fundamentals down but need help with the mental aspect of performing at a high level with the pressure on them to be as successful as possible.
The Gaylord competitive cheer team and head coach Brittany Gunderson have been dealing with a mix of both this year.
"In practice, they very clearly have proven they have the strength and ability, but instead our challenge was mindset," said Gunderson. "We have a handful of young athletes and athletes new to competitive cheer and our confidence was what hindered us."
Those early-season mindset issues along with an injury put the team in a tough spot through their first few tournaments, but they have bounced back in their past few tournaments, most recently logging their best round-one score since 2009 in a near-record score and a third-place finish in St. Johns on Monday.
The Blue Devils competed twice in December, once at the Competitive Cheerleading Coaches Association of Michigan Scholarship Invite and once at home in Gaylord.
After the calendar flipped over, however, the team hit a bump in the road.
Just prior to their UP road trip to Esacanba, sophomore Amaya Morin broke her nose at practice. While she was still able to bounce back and compete that weekend, their stunt round did not go as planned.
"When it came time, round three was honestly tragic," said Gunderson. "We pulled it off beautifully in practice but we just couldn't pull it off on the actual competition floor."
That was when she, as a coach, realized the team's problem wasn't physical, it was mental.
She took that as a challenge to get her team in the mental space to compete, and the changes they implemented seemingly paid off.
Their next competition, last Friday at the Oiler Invite in Mount Pleasant, was a resounding success as they pulled off their best third round of the season. Building on that success, the team visited St. Johns on Monday and improved even more, earning a score of 216.4 in round one before getting a 278.6 in the third round, taking their overall total to 664.7 points; just 27 points shy of the school record for an overall score.
"It was worth the failures that came before this," said Gunderson. "Seniors Genesis Wood and Fayth Sanom have undoubtedly helped lead their younger teammates to feel the satisfaction of success as we grow further into our season."
The Lady Blue Devils have four more competitions scheduled this season, with their next coming on Saturday, January 28 in Farwell.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Gaylord competitive cheer continues to improve, places third overall in St. John's
