“The prize isn’t the trophy, the prize is the journey,” Head Cheerleading Coach Chris Fecteau said.
Over winter break while many students were home enjoying the holidays and relaxing, the cheerleading team was hard at work perfecting their competition routine and busy making it to the Universal Cheerleading Association finals — which is something no other Keene State Cheerleading team has done before.
The Owls practiced not only multiple times a week during winter break, but multiple times a day, including a lifting work out, a yoga workout and a stretching workout. Fecteau said that just between Jan. 3 and Jan. 14 the girls practiced 25 times, which equals almost 60 hours of practice total in those two weeks.
“I can’t begin to explain how exhausted we were, but we needed that time to work out the routine and make it the best it could be. Looking back now, if we didn’t have all those practices and if we didn’t put in all those hours, we wouldn’t have been so successful,” Junior Becca Marquis stated.
To keep the team motivated throughout the long days Fecteau had the girls create posters with inspirational quotes on them to hang on the gym walls. Along with the quotes, letters were also hung on the wall written by each member of the team on what going to nationals meant to them.
“The first week we were there staying after during winter break, for many it was the first time sacrificing their break and ten of the girls on the team are freshmen so they don’t even know what that is but this is what it’s about. The letters were a way to verbalize to their team what nationals meant to them,” Fecteau said. For Sophomore Kylie Coffey, going to nationals was something she never thought would happen.
“I broke my ankle two years ago and I didn’t think I would be cheerleading again so competing at nationals was a big deal for me,” Coffey said.
Like many members on the team Marquis stated her one goal was to simply hit a good routine but making it to finals was unbelievable.
“I burst into tears as soon as I heard the announcement. One of the girls, Alyssa (Flattery), audio recorded the announcement of us going to nationals and as soon as you hear Keene State College, all you hear is screams and crying. It was so surreal and amazing that we had made it,” Marquis stated.
Contributed Photo / Chris Fecteau
The last two years the cheer team switched which college competition they would be competing at. In the past the college has competed at the National Cheerleading Association competition, which is held in Daytona, Florida later in the spring. The last two years the team has competed at the UCA competition held in Orlando, Florida. Fecteau said the difference between the two is the style of the competition.
“NCA is more the performance side of cheerleading, more focused on entertainment, whereas UCA is more traditional cheerleading that has a minute of cheer and a minute with music,” Fecteau said.
He continued, “The switch benefits everyone. It benefits us with a shorter season and benefits the college because we can get out in the community more and make athletics our number one priority and they can feel that with more traditionally cheerleading. Plus a lot of the time the girls just want to be college students so having that spring semester free gives them that time to not be consumed by cheer the whole year.”
The UCA competition also allows for an opportunity to earn final score points before the actual competition.
“We had to send in a crowd involvement tape before the competition and we ended up getting a fifteen out of fifteen. At the competition the cheer is worth thirty-five points so that’s fifty points out of 115 that’s a huge amount of the final score,” Fecteau said.
Fecteau said many members of the team come from a cheerleading culture that focused heavily on the performance aspect of cheerleading so the switch to a more traditional routine is still taking some time to get used to.
However, Coffey said the hardest thing to get used to about the UCA competition was competing twice in the same day.
“We didn’t compete twice in one day last year and I think that first one [competition] took a lot out of us [physically] and so the second time we competed we didn’t do as well. So I think that’s something we could work on for next year preparing to compete twice in one day,” Coffey said.
Aside from the competition aspect of the trip the team got to spend some time team bonding at the Disney parks. The team visited Magic Kingdom, Epcot and Planet Hollywood during the last few days of the trip.
“Now that we’ve made finals we need to make it a standard that were always in finals,” Fecteau said.
“I’m just so proud of all the girls this year. They did such amazing work and really put their heart and soul into practices and workouts and warm ups and on the competition mat. I’m really thankful to be on a team with such great people and athletes, and can’t wait to be back in the Florida weather with them again next year,” Marquis stated.
Although the cheer season is almost at its end Fecteau said that the team will be hosting open practices where anyone can come and practice with the team if they are interested in trying out next fall.
Kendall Pope can be contacted at kpope@keene-equinox.com
