Who Runs the World? CHARGERS!

By: Annie DeBiase

On March 24, our St. Charles Debs team won the state finals at the College at Staten Island, beating second-placed teams Our Lady Star of the Sea and St. Clare’s by 0.9 of a point with a score of 75.4. At the previous competition two weeks ago on March 10, the Debs lost by less than a point to the OLSS team, and clearly came back with a passion to beat them. In addition to first place overall, they also got the Cheer Award, which is based on the cheering without the music.

Cheerleading director Beth McGovern compared their win as “being on the top of the world”, and that there is no way to put in a sentence how happy and excited she was for this team. Debs coaches Jen Grosseto, Sam Allocca, and Nicole Allocca were happy to beat OLSS finally, as they won against the Chargers last year as well, both times by nothing more than a point. 5th grade captain Madison Swanson, who has been cheering at SCS since biddys, felt “happy and proud” to carry her team to victory one more time, as she will be going up to Varsity next year. Co-Captain Giana Epifania has high hopes for her first year on Varsity, and wants to try hard to lead her team to victory. Along with Epifania, Co-Captain Anna Tutrone hopes to win again in Varsity, and was so happy to win that she cried tears of joy as she shared one last win with her team.

Besides the Debs, our Varsity finished their season with a 4th place win, which was bittersweet for this team of 14. While they had hoped to snatch one last win before their 8th grade girls graduated(Captain Valerie Minett, Captain Isabella Pica, Julia Michelotti, Brianna Lockwood), they will soon begin to get ready for the next season, where they hopefully will grab the win and pay tribute to their former teammates.

Finally, our Biddies had competed as well and were scored unlike March 10, when their first time at CSI was exhibition, and did not count. For their first time officially competing on Staten Island, they managed to nab 2nd place, falling short to Our Lady Help of Christians. However, these girls will be back next year, where they will hopefully surpass OLHC for the win.

Overall, all teams had a good day scoring-wise, and had a good last competition for the 2017-18 season, especially the first place win in the Debs division. This is the first win that McGovern has had since becoming head of the cheerleading program, which was in 2010. This means that after 8 years of falling short of a championship, the Debs rose above and won, paying homage to McGovern, who works hard to make sure every girl is working to the next level.

St. Charles has shown the competitive cheerleading programs of SI that they are a force to be reckoned with, and they are not backing down to anyone!