Fifth at state

The Patriots were happy with their performance.

They had hoped their placing would be higher.

The Jay County High School cheerleading squad finished fifth in the Varsity C Division on Saturday at the Indiana Cheer Championship at New Castle.

It was a better finish than last season when the Patriots missed the top five, but came with mixed feelings as they thought they had done enough to place even better.

“I felt like we were higher than fifth,” said JCHS coach Cheree McCallister. “I felt like it was such a better routine in comparison to last week. I’m disheartened for the girls. …

“But I’m happy for them. Top five in the state is not so bad.”

Silver Creek repeated as the Varsity C champion as it scored 261 points. The next four squads were separated by just 3.7 points, with Delta (256.4) as the runner-up. Jay County (252.7) was fifth as it also trailed third-place Charlestown (255) and fourth-place NorthWood (253.1).

Jay County’s raw score of 255.2 would have placed it third, vaulting over Charlestown and NorthWood, but it took 2.5 points in deductions. No other squad had more than 1.5 in deductions, with Charlestown’s clean routine — it had no deductions — helping it climb all the way to third after finishing seventh in the preliminary round a week earlier.

“The two and a half points in deductions really hurt,” said McCallister. “It did make a huge impact on our placing.”

It seemed to be a handful of little things that kept the Patriots out of the top three.

For instance, their opening stunts stayed in the air but there was a deduction because one of them was unsteady. And the final pyramid hit, but one of the full twists didn’t quite make it all the way around in the sequence leading up to it.

Their jumps and tumbling were strong, including four layouts bracketing sophomore Kenzie Ring’s full twist and a group of 10 standing back tucks.

And the areas Jay County had worked on during the week of practice — stunt difficulty, synchronization of tumbling and formations/transitions — improved from the preliminary round.

“That was a much better performance than last weekend,” said McCallister. “We had our tumbling in sync. We changed our stunts a little bit, added a little more difficulty … and they hit all of that. I’m very happy overall.”

The Patriots scored at least a 7.9 in every category, including perfect 10s for jump variety, stunt difficulty, stunt variety and tumbling variety. Their best category was cheering skills and jumps, in which it racked up 57.4 out of a possible 60 points to finish second only to Silver Creek (58.1). Their lowest score in that category was a 9.2 for execution/synchronization/timing, with everything else at 9.5 or higher.

JCHS was also second in tumbling with 54.2 points — Silver Creek was first at 55.1 — but was fifth for dance, stunts and overall impression, which, in addition to the deductions, led to the fifth-place finish.