Last weekend, my daughter and her provincial champion teammates took the show to the Power Cheer National Championships, which were held in Mississauga, Ontario.
The weekend started out with some fun as T-bone, the better half and I made a pitstop at Staples to pick up some bristol board and markers, with which we proceeded to make up some signs to wave as we cheered on Cookie and her teammates.
The Hershey Center was split up with two floors going at once which meant the place was rocking all weekend. They had demo performances and some great tumbling stunts performed by alum from my alma mater, the University of Western Ontario. The reigning national collegiate champs for over 20 years running.
Cookie and her teammates took the floor for their first performance on Saturday afternoon. The run was a bit shaky and they were sitting in 9th out of 12 teams when the first round came to a close. Hope was not lost, but they knew they needed to make up a lot of ground to climb into the medals.
The second run started out really strong and they maintained it through to the end of their performance, where they had a slight bauble in their last stunt. All in all, it was a very solid performance and ranked third best in the second run.
When the two scores were tabulated, they had finished a solid fifth in the nation. This means her cheerleading season is winding down with one invitational left to go. Needless to say, I am the very proud father of this 9 year old provincial champion. She (and her team mates) may have finished 5th in the country, but they are, definately, first in my eyes.
She still has the provincial rhythmic gymnastics championships to go in a few weeks and then she (and we) can relax a little bit. T-Bone has soccer season revving up soon which means many evenings swatting bugs and smearing the sunscreen on as we tour around Kanata.