Every year the Bellevue West cheerleading team goes to the state championships. In the past four years, the team has earned three runner-up titles and one state championship. In the 2022-23 cheerleading season the team landed in second place through hard work and dedication. This achievement did not come easy; the team has been practicing two or three times a week to prepare themselves and perfect their routine. 

“We took the time to go over every section and run that specific section multiple times to make sure everyone knows what they are doing so we could be confident when we performed,” senior Maris Clark said. 

The team has two different routines: a game day and traditional. They earned seventh place for their game day routine, achieving a score of 88.60, 1.80 points behind sixth place. The game day routine consists of a sideline, traditional routine, and lastly a musical element such as a fight song or chant.  

The traditional routine includes cheer, dance, and tumbling. The overall goal in traditional routines is to best showcase the whole team’s talents and abilities they have learned throughout the season. 

With their traditional performance routine, they earned runner-up with a score of 93.10, only .20 points behind Pius X and their winning routine. 

The state competition is different from their normal competitions. There are about half of the Nebraska schools performing at regular competitions whereas at state, all of the qualifying Nebraska cheer and dance teams are there to perform. The competition is also held in a large arena which is far different than their usual competition.

“It’s definitely way more people, and more teams,” junior Ka’Maiya Hunt said. “You want to do great at competitions, but state is what our main goal is.” 

According to Hunt and Clark, the team consistently runs through their routines multiple times during practices and complete workouts directed by their coaches. 

Clark said that preparing for state brings the girls closer together through all the time spent together at practices and competitions. 

“We all grew together as a team and put out a routine that we were all happy with,” Clark said. 

With the cheer season completed the team will be losing multiple senior cheerleaders, but there are high hopes for the upcoming season. 

“We are not just a cheer team that waves our poms around for teams, we are athletes too,” said Clark “We do workouts, run routines multiple times a practice while still cheering for other sports.”