THUNDER BAY — The St. Ignatius High School cheer team was in high spirits after returning from their second-place win in the WSCC Medium Varsity division at the International Cheer Union World School Cheerleading Championships earlier this week.
The new championship showcases schools from over 10 countries around the world instead of private clubs, gyms or national team representation. The competition also offered several awards and has multiple divisions, including all-girl teams, co-ed teams, teams that tumble and non-tumbling teams.
The Medium Varsity Division focuses on all girl teams with 12 to 16 member squads.
St. Ignatius' coaches noted Canada represented and fared very well in the overall competition — around seven other Canadian teams joined them at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Fla.
Christine Witiluk, the head coach, said the competition was really fierce.
A video of their part of the competition is available online.
“We feel great. Our goal was just to go in and hit a clean routine, which is quite an accomplishment because of our short season,” said Christine.
“The other teams we’re up against are running full year and we start in November, so really we’re at a little bit of a disadvantage. We’re just happy that we were able to participate for the experience.”
She said most people don’t know that cheer requires a lot of work because it’s not like other sports where you learn it in elementary school. Instead, they had to learn from the basics right up to the skills they do, she explained.
“To teach these technical skills is a lot of work and a lot of progression and I don't know that everybody quite realizes to be safe in the sport, you have to start from the ground up,” said Christine.
Her daughter Jacey, also a coach on the team, said they had to add a lot of extra hours to their practices and it was tough with some people missing, getting sick and a bunch of unexpected things popping up, but the team came together.
“We had a lot of good practices near the end and we pulled it together and we looked amazing,” said Jacey.
She said they were honoured to even share the floor with some of these amazing teams and compare to them — she really appreciated their team for trying so hard and getting them there.
Julia Nicholl, one of the team’s members, said it felt amazing just to see their hard work finally pay off and that the team got the second-place win.
“My favourite experience was just being there and seeing all the different teams and what they can do and I think we can take a lot of the hard work that the other teams put in and then improve ourselves for the next competition,” said Nicholl.
Tahlia Colistro, another cheerleader on the team, added she feels like they worked very hard for it and earned it: "You could see all the way from the cheer to the pyramid that we were putting in 100 per cent."
“I think we learned a lot more about cheer and the ethics of it and for the next competition, probably just to keep our heads up more,” said Colistro.
Alexia Koukos agreed with her fellow cheerleaders that it was a really great experience and that all their hard work had paid off.
“My favourite experience was seeing all the different types of cheers and something we can improve on is probably doing the cheer,” said Koukos.
The team first participated in the championships in 2020.
However, Christine said the team likely won't return next year as it was quite an expensive trip and very far for them to get there.
“The travel was kind of treacherous, so we don't plan to go every year obviously," said Christine.
"But if we did go back just with our constraints, we (will) just do what we can and we know we can't get there to win, but we know we can certainly make a valiant effort.”
