Chesapeake Cheerleaders Fly To Winter Trifecta With County, Region And State Titles

On February 12, the Chesapeake cheerleading team completed a sweep of the winter season by winning the state championship at Harford Community College.

The Cougars’ routine garnered a score of 125.8 points to capture the program’s 14th state championship overall.

Chesapeake won the winter county championship at Broadneck High School on January 23 and captured the region title on February 5 before putting the finishing touch on the year with a state title.

In the fall season, Chesapeake won county and region championships before narrowly missing out on a state title. That loss became a motivator for the Cougars, who went on to sweep every meet this season, beginning with the county championships.

“Counties I feel like was a super energetic performance. Coming off of fall states where we lost by 0.4 points, that was still stinging a little bit, so I felt like we had something to regain and prove a little bit to ourselves,” said head coach Lisa Elliott. “It started at counties and just built from there. We are super big on celebrating our wins for that weekend or a couple days, then we forget about it and move on to the next one like we’re a second-place team.”

Elliott noted that the routines from fall to winter changed, as did the personnel. The team used two new flyers from the fall season, eschewing the kind of continuity they’ve enjoyed in recent years and seeing new athletes in different roles rise to the challenges they faced this winter.

“That was a little bit different for us going into the winter,” Elliott said. “It’s usually pretty much the same team unless we pull a couple kids up from JV. So we have two people in the air, and they are stepping up phenomenally.”

The winter county championship was the 19th all-time for the Cougars program, and the state championship was Chesapeake’s 14th, both records.