The Drury University cheer team is preparing for the National Cheer competition in Orlando, Florida. Last year, the team brought home the national championship. Head Coach Ashley Parnell explains what Drury’s cheer team will be competing in at the national cheer competition: “We compete on a small co-ed team with four males and twelve females. It’s two minutes and thirty seconds of tumbling, stunts tosses, and crowd leading cheer. We also compete in Gameday, which is a competition highlighting your university’s traditions and crowd leading skills—something like your school’s fight song.”

Senior athlete Kyllie Schmied says she believes the team is ready for the competition stating, “Our coaches have prepared us for how the competition will run and we practice with a 12-minute warm up time like we will have before we compete at Nationals! I am confident in our skills and I trust everyone on the mat to do their part to execute our routine. I believe we are in a great spot and we’re ready to show everyone how hard we have been working!”

Coach Parnell explains Nationals will look very different because of Covid-19 restrictions put in place to keep the athletes and crowd safe. “Covid has impacted everything in every athletic activity and cheerleading nationals is no different. There will be temperature screenings at every entry point, limited spectators—for example only supporters of your university will be allowed to watch in the standing room only area. Teams will be in and out of facilities. There will be no watching other teams compete from inside. ESPN Wide World of sports, Disney and UCA all have mask mandates. The Drury Cheer team will be wearing masks at all times, execpt on the actual competition floor.”

Even with the changes, Coach Parnell is grateful for the opportunity to send her team to Nationals. “Covid made everything uncertain in April of 2020. I’m extremely proud of the perseverance, grit, and drive these athletes have. They are amazing people on and off the mat.”

Her team is grateful for the opportunity too. “We are blessed to get the opportunity to go at all! A lot of teams are unable to go because of travel restrictions from their schools, so we are very fortunate to be going,” said Kyllie Schmied about being about to travel to the competition. “There are many ways Nationals will be different this year, but we have handled everything this season has thrown at us so far, so I have no doubts that Nationals will be anything less than great!”

The team agrees that while it would be nice to defend their title, winning isn’t everything. “There is always pressure to do your best at college nationals. I am sure the athletes feel some pressure to defend their title, but our practice and our goals are around this year’s team, and hitting our skills for this year’s routine. We rarely talk about winning, it’s about beating the scoresheet and executing our routine,” said Coach Parnell.

Junior athlete Carter Lipari says the team’s goals going into Nationals are not just to win. “Our team goal overall, as it has been the last few years, is to just hit our routine. We always want to win but essentially our way of thinking is that if we go down there and hit and everything goes well then we’ll be champions anyway.”

The team will compete April 27-29 in Orlando, Florida to defend their 1st place title.

Article by Marissa Mayfield