Football cheerleaders trained and worked towards succeeding at nationals long after the football season ended. The team left on Thursday, Feb. 6, after third period for Orlando.

The cheer team practiced Friday through Sunday to work on perfecting their 2 minute and 30 second routine.

“The first day it went alright; we still qualified for finals because what happens with our division, there’s 30 teams and 15 advance to finals. And with a drop we still made it onto finals the next day, and the next day we did better, but it still wasn’t our best so we ended up placing where we did,” junior cheerleader Amanda Rock said.

“We kind of got gypped at Nationals, I guess you could say, by five places because we went over by four seconds, so technically we deserved eighth, but we ended up taking home 13th,” junior cheerleader Amanda Rock said.

Despite all the effort put into preparing, opportunities to have fun and relax were given to the girls. Teammates could room with each other and the team got to visit the Magic Kingdom, as well as eat dinner together.

“We worked so hard and even though Nationals didn’t come out the way we wanted it to, we still won state and that’s the first time in history that we broke HSE’s 4-peat and that’s just an honor to us. So, we’re still state champions and no one can take that away from us.” Rock said.