Cheerleading is like Golf?

You can't play Defense.

All you can do is go out and hit your routine and hope for the other schools choke. Well that is exactly what happened in Prelims on Thursday. VT killed it and several other normally dominant schools choked liked Phil Mickelson at the 2006 U.S Open.

Below is the link to our routine from Prelims. Take 3 Minutes (skip to the 1:15 mark) and check it out. Even if you don't know anything about Cheerleading, I'll break it down for you. We throw girls high and they spin RULL fast. Several people do a back flip and a 360 AT THE SAME TIME (1:30). At one point, a couple guys are holding up girls WITH ONE ARM (2:16). Its pretty f-n awesome.

http://www.hokiesports.com/videos/?id=4782

Now for some "Real Analysis"

A Great day for Virginia Tech Cheerleading that didn't start out so great

Unfortunately, the High Techs and the All-Girl Squad finished outside the top half of their divisions (9th & 11th respecitively) and will not move on to compete in finals.

HOWEVER , The Coed Team made program history. They placed Second Overall behind only the 2012 National Champions, Oklahoma State. This is ground breaking for a couple reasons.

First, as I alluded to earlier, Virginia Tech has never placed this high in the Preliminary round. EVER. It will lead to a big advantage in Finals because, no matter how much the NCA likes to down play it, confirmation bias plays a large roll in judging in Finals. The judges tend to re-affirm their rankings from the Preliminary round. So, if we can hit everything again, we could see the highest finish in Virginia Tech Cheerleading History.

Second, we placed ahead of Louisville. LOUISVILLE! Louisville is to Collegiate Cheerleading as Alabama is to College Football (#BEATBAMA). They've won Eight of the last Eleven National Championships. They are one of the few Elite Cheerleading Programs in the Nation and have been a dominant force in every category (Dance, Large Coed, Small Coed, & All Girl) as long as I've been involved with Cheerleading. To place ahead of them, even in prelims, is a very big accomplishment.

As far as the routine goes, this is one of the hardest I've seen us put together. The degree of difficulty is high across all categories (baskets may be a weak spot) and there is always something going on. The Elite Stunt* is out-of-this-world The key is that we hit everything clean enough to avoid penalties. Obvious and Ugly falls lead to big deductions and there were a lot today from other teams. Louisville & Texas Tech would've placed higher than us, but both had a lot of deductions from falls. We had very few bobbles in our Stunt, Pyramids, & Baskets and only one minor stunt fell all the way to the ground. Tumbling and Motions looked strong all around.

My Prediction: We ride the momentum from yesterday's performance to the highest finish in VT History (Top 3). Who knows, if things break right, we could bring home a championship. Anything can happen on the Finals Mat!

Finish strong and make history!

Good Luck in Finals and GO HOKIES!

*Our Elite Stunt (1:48): Ball-Up-Stretch to Power-Press Arabian to Cradle. Back walk out of the Cradle to Full-Up Scorpion Double Downs. Duh

All Scores and Routines can be viewed here:
http://www.varsity.com/event/1725/2013_NCA_NDA_College