Cheerleaders achieve best finish ever in national championship

After years of topping out at ninth place in the national championships, the Sebring High School cheerleading team broke through with an impressive performance and their best national championship finish ever.

The Sebring team finished sixth place over the weekend in the Universal Cheerleaders Association's National High School Cheerleading Championship at Wide World of Sports in Disney World.

"We had this ninth-place curse; for years and years we've never gotten higher than ninth," the team's coach Carolyn Shoemaker said Thursday. "I think their strong point was the way they just decided they were going to man-up at the end, and they were going to not come in ninth again."

Starting with 18 teams in their division, the Sebring team made the top nine cut for the final competition with a seventh-place ranking.

In the competition's finals, Sebring moved up to sixth place, missing fifth place by only one point.

"We had a great showing this year; we've never placed that high," Shoemaker said.

As a flyer and basket girl, Junior Ashley Alicea tops off the team's pyramid stunts and gets tossed, basket style, by her teammates, to perform twists and twirls.

"We were all glad because we worked so hard for it," she said. Now it's time to rest the body.

Shoemaker said after graduating 14 seniors from the team last year and with only one returning male competing, the team's tenacity made up for its lack of experience.

The Sebring team has 25 members, including eight males, but in Sebring's division the high school nationals specifies no more than 20 can be on the mat competing.

After winning at the state level the week before, with 25 members in competition, it was a challenge to adjust to a 20-member routine, Shoemaker said.

The competition is video recorded by ESPN, but Shoemaker does not know when the competition will be broadcast or if the Sebring team will be shown.

"They always put the ones that are in the finals on T.V.; since we were close to a top-five finish we just might get TV time," she said.