On February 8, 2108, the Marlboro High School cheerleaders left on their journey to Orlando, Florida to compete in the High School National Cheerleading Championships (NHSCC). NHSCC is the most prestigious cheerleading championship in the country, and it is held every year at the Walt Disney World Resort on Orland, FL and televised on ESPN and ESPN2 to over 100 million homes in 32 countries. This year there were over 800 teams, 15,00 athletes and 50,000 attendees at the National High School Cheerleading Championship.

Since August the MHS cheerleaders began working on their competition routine in hopes of getting a bid the national competition. This team spent the fall and training 3-4 times a week at both the high school and the Rising Stars Gymnastics Academy in Manalapan, NJ. Their bid came from their first competition in Toms River, NJ on October XX, 2017. From here it was nonstop practice, as well as cheering at MHS football and basketball games before the team was ready to compete.

Under the direction of Head Coach Lauren Sewald and Assistant coach Tori Stagg, the team competed in the medium varsity division on Saturday, February 10th at the ESPN Center in Orlando. The team scored even higher than they did last year and made it into the semifinal round of competition. Though the girls did their best, they were unable to make it to the finals. Head Coach Sewald stated “We had our highest scoring pyramid EVER and our pyramid score was actually within the top 3 teams in our division. Wow!! So proud of these girls and the work that they have put in!” “Our goal was to improve this year, which we did, and this year scoring has now placed us in the top 25 teams in the nation.”

This year had an amazing group of cheerleaders, led by seniors, Sarah Esposito, Megan Geller, Hailey Hamilton, Erin Kaplan, Hailey Santana, and Danica Stern. Having greatly improved over last year, the Marlboro High School cheerleading team is looking forward to another incredible next year and hoping to make it to the finals. Good luck to the graduating seniors!