CHARLOTTESVILLE – The Eastern Hancock girls cheerleading team has already captured two championships this season — state and regional — but now have their eyes set on one more, this time an unfamiliar one.
For the first time in school history, the Royals qualified for the National High School Cheerleading Championships.
The tournament will take place from Feb. 10 through Feb. 12 and will be hosted at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World.
To qualify, Eastern Hancock won the Universal Cheerleaders Association Regional held in November at Hamilton Southeastern High School, where they beat out 12 other teams.
The regional title was also the first in the school’s history.
“We actually got first in the regional, so I feel pretty good about where we are at, but there are teams down there that we’ve never even heard of from all different places and states,” Eastern Hancock head coach Jade Galyan said. “We’ve never competed in UCA’s, and we’ve never gone to nationals before, so again it’s just that unknown. That’s our main worry. We know what we’re doing and what we want to do, but we don’t necessarily know what they are looking for.”
The Royals will be competing in the “Game Day” division, which showcases more traditional cheerleading and doesn’t include tumbling. It includes four categories that the team will be scored on — band chant, situational sideline, cheer and fight song. A different panel of judges will score the team in each area, giving them a total out of 100 after the four categories.
“I feel pretty good about it. The division we’re in is mostly just cheering and crowd leading, which our team does a really good job with,” Galyan said. “But you never know because it’s teams from all over the country. You just don’t know what they’re coming with, so you’ve just got to be prepared.”
According to the UCA website, teams in the “Game Day” division will be evaluated on their ability to lead the crowd, proper game day skill incorporation and performance, motion and dance, and overall routine.
“The division we’re in is very subjective, because of the potential for crowd involvement and that sort of thing, so it’s kind of an unknown,” Galyan said. “I feel confident with my girls because I know what they can do, but it’s hard to tell.”
With crowd involvement playing such a big role at nationals, Galyan and the team have made some adjustments to their routine and setup. Since the regional, the Royals have tweaked a few things in how they set up, spreading themselves out more to take up more space on the floor. They have also added props and visual aids to hopefully help drive home the crowd engagement.
“We changed quite a bit, which is risky because we haven’t put it in front of anything to see if it would score higher,” Galyan said. “We added some flags and a few signs to help with crowd involvement. We moved some of our formations to spread out on the floor a bit more.”
Altering their routine isn’t something that’s new to the Royals. After finishing first at the state prelims, the team added things, removed things and made adjustments based on the judges feedback.
It worked, with the team securing it’s third state championship in the last four seasons in the Varsity D group.
This weekend, the Royals will be hoping the changes lead to a similar outcome.
Making this trip even more special for Galyan and the team, is the fact that nearly half of the Royals team is made up of seniors.
Hannah Lambert, Halie Corbett, Cameron Koch, Esther Surburg, Maddie Gaylord, Haylee Craney, and Austyn Sutton will be making the trip in their senior season.
Gracie Cook, Rylee Carter, Makenna Collins, Madi Engleking, Cameron Spegal, Lainey Sutton, Hayden Lambert, Hannah Grove, and Myah Gardner round out the Eastern Hancock roster.
They compete Friday at 2:37 p.m. with the top 18 teams in their division advancing to Saturday’s semi-finals. From there, the top 11 teams will advance to the finals on Sunday.
