By: Whitney Morrison

As the annual Vandalia Holiday Tournament came to an end on December 29, 2016, the FHS cheerleaders proudly took home the championship trophy.

This tournament consisted of eight cheerleading teams competing for the first place trophy. The cheerleading squads were judged by two coaches from teams that aren’t participating in the tournament. All squads are judged three times during the tournament and then the final day is when the top three squads receive their trophy. Squads are judged by crowd involvements, smiles, formation, cheers, tumbling, and jumps.

Flora cheerleaders have not placed in this tournament for quite some time, so everyone was very determined to place this year. Senior, Tiffanae Litaker said ¨it took four years¨ and sophomore Madison Uebinger posted that she was ¨very proud¨ of the team. Before the tournament started, all the cheerleaders stood in their sidelines during practice and reviewed cheers to perfect them and then practiced every floor cheer to make sure the formations and timing were right. At this point in the season the squad knew they worked so hard and deserved it. This year the seniors made sure to up the difficulty so if any other category scored lower they would always keep the difficulty at a ten. Emily Cox and Tiffanae Litaker made sure to look up videos of competitive stunts that would be easy to perform but look difficult at the same time.
Before the final game one of the judges will hand the score sheets to the team’s coach, and during halftime of the game they announce if you’ve won anything.

The top three squads to receive trophies were Flora, Effingham St. Anthony, and Pana.