Malia Higgins, Estella Castro, Riley Lempiainen, Blair Hibbing, Kendall Wakefield, Saya Funaba-O’Brien, Mai-Anh Nguyen, and Ava Price.
Gilbert will spend much of the next two months perfecting its cheer-dance routine for the state competition, but following that the Tigers will quickly move on to the next chapter. Why so quickly? Because this is a nationals year. For the second time, the Tigers will take part in the na- tional competition in Dallas, Texas, in late January. For that, they will shift back to a game time spirit routine, which means a new routine and new skills to learn and perfect. Gilbert first competed at na- tionals in 2023 and it was a great experience that included an eighth-place finish in the Small School Division. “The first half of the season is focused on state,” Sytsma said. “Then we get a new routine, which I think will be good for the kids because we’re not working on the same thing for six months. That’s a long time.”
Sytsma says she learned a lot from her first nationals experi- ence, and she can take that knowledge and pass it on to her girls. “I think we’ll make some cho- reography adjustments (from 2023),” she said. “How we pre- pare the kids for their crowd- leading skills will be different too because there’s a correct way to use signs, megaphones,
and flags. Game time is its own beast if you want to do it well, and we want to do it well. Our goal is go out and hit a zero de- duction routine because that’s the one thing we can control.” In addition to the longer com- petitive cheer season, Sytsma is also in charge of a large foot- ball cheerleading team that con- sists of 25 girls.
“For a school our size, those are great numbers, and it goes beyond memorizing cheers and doing stunts,” Sytsma said. “The fact that we get to be a part of community, work with younger kids, and also do fun high-level stunts on a Friday night, it’s just great. It speaks to the high-level kids that we have; they’re super talented and they work really hard.”
52 GAME ON | FALL 2024
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