As a freshman, Summer was selected to be an alternate for Steele's competition cheer team. She was a little bummed to find out that the budget would not allow the team to take any alternates with them to the competition. She learned several girls' positions, though, just in case. At the first practice back after the Christmas break, the coaches called her into their office and asked her if she would be willing to fill in as Knightro, the Steele mascot. She was unsure, but ultimately, it provided her an opportunity to go to the competition with the team, so she decided to take it on.
It was definitely more of a challenge than she realized, as there was no choreography written for Knightro and the costume was DEFINITELY not made for a 5'3" girl. She overcame the costume issue by leaving off the boots that she couldn't walk in and added some clandestine lifting of the helmet into the routine so that she could see where she was going. Since she had already learned the cheer routine, she incorporated some of it and came up with a routine for Knightro. Oh, and she had it competition-ready in 3 days.
Sadly, this is the ONLY pic I got of her as Knightro. She was hot and sweaty and NOT having it.
***UPDATE***
She found another pic of herself in the Knightro suit!
The team left for Ft. Worth on Thursday morning. They had a nice team dinner and some quality team bonding time on Thursday night and then got up Friday morning ready to hit the mat. The team had never cracked the Top 20 at competition, so they were really motivated to hit their routines. Their motivation and hard work paid off! For the first time in school history, the Knights placed in the Top 20 at Prelims and moved on to finals. They ended up placing 18th overall, an improvement of 16 places from last year! We are so proud of these kiddos!
Ready for a night on the town!
Summer and Abel at PF Changs
And of course... she had to buy herself a shirt!
Here is their performance at finals. Summer is in the Knight suit in the back
No comments:
Post a Comment