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 Over the last two weekends the Lincoln "Sweet
16" have attended two qualifying tournaments, attempting to
advance into two different state tournaments. They succeeded in
both!
The first qualifying tournament took place at
Highland High School a week ago. Lincoln traveled four hours round
trip in inclement weather to try to get to the Illinois Cheerleading
Coaches Association state finals. Lincoln was scheduled to
perform its three-minute routine first. The Railer athletes
performed exceptionally well before a packed gymnasium. Then, the
waiting began as all of the other teams performed.
The Railers waited almost four more hours for
the tournament to play out before the announcement came. Lincoln
placed third among the teams performing, and its point total gave
LCHS a berth in the ICCA state finals at the Prairie Capital
Convention Center in Springfield on Valentine's Day weekend.
With one state final already secured, Lincoln
moved on to the IHSA sectionals at Peoria High
School. The IHSA hosted five different sectionals Saturday, with 16 teams
facing off in each. Only five squads from each sectional
would earn the privilege of moving on to the IHSA state finals this coming weekend at the Cellular One Coliseum in
Bloomington. The 25 state qualifiers would begin
competition this coming Friday.
In the Peoria Sectional complex, Lincoln squared
off against Champaign Centennial, Bloomington, Normal Community,
Pontiac, Bartonville Limestone, Morris, Streator, Mahomet, Peoria
Central, Coal City, Dunlap, Peoria Notre Dame, Fairbury Prairie
Central, Sandwich and Peoria Richwoods.
The competition was highly competitive, with a
number of great performances. Lincoln's performance was technically
flawless. Judges' scoring sheets distributed at the end of the
competition showed no automatic performance deductions off the Railer score sheet. In fact, in the end, only
0.37 of a point would separate the second- through fourth-place
teams.
When all the cheering, dancing and stunting was done, the five
teams that were selected to move on to the state finals were
Lincoln, Champaign Centennial, Bloomington, Morris and Bartonville
Limestone. Champaign Centennial took first-place honors to claim the
sectional title.
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The Railers will now move on to Bloomington
on Friday, with performances to begin at 9:15 a.m. The
exact time of the Railers' performance will be posted on the IHSA site,
http://www.ihsa.org/,
by Monday evening. If the Railers place among the top 10 teams in
their initial performance, they will return on Saturday to compete
for the state medium-school competitive cheer championship trophy.
In just its second year of existence at LCHS,
this will be the Lincoln squad's second straight appearance at the IHSA state
competition and its first at the ICCA state finals.
With two good weeks behind them, they will need
their best-ever performances to have two more. Will you, ladies?
GO, RAILERS!
[By RICK
L. HOBLER]
Respond to the writer at
rhobler@lccs.edu.
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