The Purvis High School varsity cheerleading team saw its share of adversity over the course of this season – in particular, five girls leaving the team during the year, dropping the squad down to only 17 members.
But that didn’t deter the team from putting in the work – 198.5 hours of practice time, not including competitions or extra classes – to bring home top honors and a national title last month from the 2020 National High School Cheerleading Championship and National Dance Team Championship.
“It really made all of our practices very worth it – spending all our time on these two routines made it really worth it, because all our hard work paid off,” team captain Haegan Tynes said. “(With members leaving), it made it very hard for us because we had to redo a lot of things.
“That also is what made winning so special to us, because we had so many things go wrong through the season. So that’s what made winning really worth it, because we made it through.”
The Purvis High team won Large Varsity Game Day Division II at the event, which was held at Walt Disney World Resort and produced by the Universal Cheerleaders Association and the Universal Dance Association. The cheerleading and dancing events showcased 25,000 athletes representing 1,270 teams from 36 states, as well as 62 teams from 12 international countries.
The Purvis girls competed in the Game Day Division and the Traditional Division, going up against more than 20 teams in prelims, semifinals and finals. The team spent the entire summer putting together two routines for the divisions.
“Game Day is a routine, but it’s a representation of what you do at football games,” Tynes said. “It does include stunting and tumbling, and you do four different dances, a cheer and a chant, all in that one routine.
“Then in Traditional, you have tumbling stunts and cheer, and it’s very upbeat. You have the music going with your routine, and that is more elite stunts. We had to spend the whole summer doing each routine over and over again until we couldn’t get it wrong.”
Although this is the first national championship for the Purvis team, the girls made it to last year’s national competition, where they placed seventh in the Game Day Division and made it to the semifinals in the Traditional Division. Now that the squad has brought home a national championship, the girls’ aim is to keep winning.
“Our season is over, and we’ve had a few recognition events,” Tynes said. “We have tryouts this week for the new team, and we aim to keep winning and start a streak.”
