District Mini Cheer Competition

WINCHESTER — When all 11 Northwestern District cheerleading teams competed at Liberty High School on Oct. 9, Sherando finished in the bottom half of the event and behind most of the other Class 4 schools.

On Thursday, the Warriors began screaming and jumping up and down at James Wood High School's Shirley Gymnasium shortly after the Class 4 Northwestern District mini competition was finished. Only the top two scores were announced, and the second-place team — Sherando — had its score announced first, followed by the championship Liberty squad.

"Districts [at Liberty] this year was very tough for us," Warriors senior Madison Cowden said. "We didn't have the best time at districts. But we put countless hours of hard work into the gym. We came back and put a routine out on the mat that we really believe is going to take us to states this year.

"I am really proud of my team. All of our hard work is finally paying off. I'm really blessed and lucky to be able to share a team with these girls, and do what we love."

The four Winchester-Frederick County schools are bunched together closer than ever, so a shuffling of the team order has occurred often this year. Thursday was just the latest example that demonstrates that the competition for the two state spots should be fierce when the Region 4D championships take place on Nov. 2 at Jefferson Forest High School.

Liberty won with 235 points, and the Eagles were followed by Sherando (204), Handley (202.25), James Wood (191) and Millbrook (181).

The Pioneers were fourth overall and second only to Liberty (second place) among Class 4 schools at the Northwestern District event in Bealeton. But Millbrook had to make a bit of an adjustment shortly before Thursday's competition. One of the Pioneers' tumblers suffered an injury in warmups, and Millbrook's routine was moved back from the second of the evening to fifth to give the Pioneers extra time to prepare.

Liberty is clearly strong and Salem is the defending Region 4D champion, but all of the four local schools will think they have a shot at a state berth if they perform their best on Nov. 2.

"Every competition we've gone to with the local schools, one week we'll win, the next week, Sherando will win, the next week, Millbrook will win, the next week, Handley's ahead," said James Wood head coach Wendy DeMaio, whose team placed sixth in Class 4 last year. "The scores have been fluctuating and going back and forth all season."

Sherando's new head coach Taylor Blandford knows what it's like to perform in state competition for the Warriors. Blandford was on the Class 4 state runner-up team in 2013, and she's enjoying getting the most out of this year's team with the help of her former head coach. Tom Grim stepped down in 2018 but is back as an assistant coach this year.

"I love coaching back at the school that I cheered at," Blandford said. "[My experience] made me who I am today."

Blandford said Thursday was definitely a step in the right direction for the Warriors.

"Our routine was really, really, clean tonight," Blandford said. "The girls had a lot of energy being that a lot of our fans were here because it's closer to home. So just the energy in the crowd, and us being clean and working the past couple weeks to get here is what really put us forward."

For the longest time, Handley's scores have been well below the scores posted by the Frederick County schools. But as evidenced by the fact that the Judges finished ahead of the Colonels and Pioneers on Thursday, this year has been different. Handley is led by a couple alums as coaches in Chyanna Jones and Kelly Huynh.

Jones said the Judges were second-to-last at the district meet at Liberty, adding that "it hurt."

Expectations are higher now. Jones said she's proud that the Judges took third Thursday and wants her team to be proud, but she said there are little things the team will need to work on before regionals.

"I would say significantly," said Jones when asked about how much Handley has improved this year. "I think that the work that they've put in is showing right now. They have a very different mindset this season. We're trying to coach for the culture of being better and not making excuses. The athletes are doing what we ask.

"People frequently count us out just because historically, we have not been a strong competition team. But we have a lot of talented kids who work hard. I anticipate we'll only get better."

DeMaio noted that James Wood only has six people back from last year's team that graduated five accomplished seniors. The Colonels have a new group of flyers and seven freshmen.

"We've coached them all season, and they've done a really good job," DeMaio said. "They've done everything we've asked them to do."

DeMaio said competition cheer teams are adjusting to a new scoring rubric this year that makes it harder to get high execution scores. But James Wood seems to be figuring things out well as the season has progressed. The Colonels (sixth in the district meet) had to resstart its routine on Thursday after its music briefly went off several seconds after it started playing.

"In our [most recent] competitions, we've gone up 10 points, 10 points, 20 points, and from last week to this week we went up another 10 points," DeMaio said. "That's good. We're hitting our goals. We keep adding harder stuff, and they keep hitting it. We're just going to go into region and just really try to get that top score. We're getting there."

Millbrook senior Ava Mannarino said the tumbler who was injured was only involved in one stunt, so the Pioneers had time to fix things. Millbrook will now try and change the order of local teams again at the region event.

"I'm very confident [in our ability]," Mannarino said. "We still have a week of practice [for our injured tumbler] to get better. I think we can come out and do really well."

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