ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
With gyms in Garden City, Dodge City and Liberal, Fusion Athletics has sent cheer teams from two of its locations to the Prep and Rec Grand Nationals competition in Central Florida.
In April, the third gym was added to that list with Liberal sending a group to Orlando, Fla., and not only did the team compete, they took home some hardware, achieving much success.
Fusion’s Team Surge recently were awarded level champions at the national competition, and parents, coaches and team members all helped in the success of the team.
Parent Mina Favila said everyone who took part had some nerves going in because none of them had been to Florida or at a competition of this magnitude.
“We knew there was going to be more than 300 teams, but we were only competing against six or seven teams,” she said. “In my perspective, we were nervous for the girls, but we knew they had it in them seeing them in their previous competitions locally and far.”
Team member Roxy Olvera said her nerves came later in the event, though.
“I wasn’t nervous until we went for awards,” she said.
Parent Fred Greeson, however, knew the team could do the job.
“I feel they’re confident in their routine, and they’ve done very well at previous competitions,” she said. “I felt they did very well.”
Team member Jaylah Orozco said there were similarities and differences between the Orlando event and the competitions Team Surge takes part in during the year.
“It was like a normal competition, but in Florida, it wasn’t a normal competition because it had a lot of teams,” she said. “I told myself we could do it. Try your best, and never give up.”
“We went for the experience, but we came out as champions,” parent Gabby Urquidi said.
Favila said throughout the competition, all of Team Surge’s emotions were changing.
“As parents, as spectators, we see how they’re numbering in fifth place, in third place, in fourth place, and when you’re in the top two, you’re like what is it going to be,” she said. “You make faces. You grab on to each other, and they’re sitting with their heads down, criss crossed. Whenever they realized they were between second and first place and you hear you’re not second, that means your first. With their faces coming up, you can see their smile from a mile away from all of them. You have tears from all sides.”
Fusion recently started its ninth season of cheer, and Favila said most of the team is coming back, with many more youth trying out.
“We are hoping for a good turnout for Liberal and making the gym bigger for the girls to have different teams,” she said.
Team Surge finished as the top in its level division, and while the exact scoring was not known, Favila said the team was among the top 10 amongst the 500 competing in Orlando.
Greeson said points for the two-day competition were spread equally.,
“You get 50 percent of the points and 50 percent from the second day’s performance,” she said. “They did tell us after the kids went on the second day, we were 1.78 points ahead of the team in second. We had a pretty good lead going into the second day. They killed it. They did a really good job.”
Favila said the team’s performance in Florida was the best she had seen all year.
“It even gave me the chills seeing them perform because they were on top of it,” she said. “They did excellent. They needed points for crowd interaction. That’s what made it a little harder for us. Theoretically, you have 17 athletes. Some athletes had two parents. Some athletes only had one. Some athletes had parents and grandparents there. We had a good crowd, but we did not have a big crowd.”
Favila said this meant parents from the local team had to yell twice as hard and three times as loud as those from other teams, and she said the two days varied as to the volume of yelling.
“I think us yelling the first day compared to the second day was also very different, very ecstatic,” she said. “You could tell on their faces when they went out and they were doing it. I don’t know if they could hear us while they’re on the stage, but some of their faces were smiles. They would look at us, and they’d make a little eye contact in the middle of a routine. Their faces lit up because we were being so loud. We yelled for the whole three minutes they performed.”
Favila said the teams in their level varied in size.
“It varies on the size,” Favila said. “There was a team on the first team that had eight girls. There was one that had 25, 26 girls out there on the floor. We were going up against them. We were close in numbers to them.”
Greeson said team members are normally quiet as they prepare for their routine, but with parents and coaches cheering, some did not understand what was going on in the crowd.
“The girls were asking ‘What are you guys doing?’” she said. “But we were so loud from start to finish.”
Favila said parents get pep talks before competitions, and at Orlando, teams are given points partly based on crowd interaction.,
“When we travel with Garden City teams or Dodge City teams, we all go together regardless if your child is on the Liberal team, Dodge team or Garden,” she said. “We cheer regardless because we’re the same gym, but here, it was just Liberal. We didn’t have all of that momentum, but we made it happen. The girls were kind of shook when they came out. One of them made a face like you guys are so loud I can hear you, but she kept going on the routine. I dont’ think the girls expected to get it all while we were there. Maybe some did.”
With this being Team Surge’s first time at the national competition, Greeson said many were unsure of what to do and how to do it.,
“It’s not like they had gone before and learned the ropes,” she said. “It was this year, they went, they learned, and they won.”
Favila said the competition was an experience for coaches, parents and team members.
“It’s your first year with the whole season doing cheer and to go to Florida, to make it and to win,” she said. “It’s a big deal.”
The news that Team Surge had won did not come until the evening, and for finishing first amongst 110 teams, Favila said the girls did a great job.
“They did all the work in reality,” she said. “We just funded the trip.”
With this just being Team Surge’s third year, Favila said being this good this quick means everything.
“I don’t want to say the coaches didn’t expect this momentum, but I really do think there was a little bit of doubt,” she said. “In the previous years, the girls were not in line to go to Florida, but we would always receive a partial paid bid. We received one the first year we competed in Tulsa. We received a second bid the following year in Kansas City, but as parents or as coaches, we’re not prepared to go.”
That bid, however, was received at one of Team Surge’s last competitions, and two weeks to prepare to Florida did not give the team enough time.
“In a perfect world, sometimes, you can make it happen, but not in this world,” Favila said. “We were not able to compete those past two years, so to make it the third year,”
Favila said team members came into last season believing they could reach Florida because parents also believed in them.
“Clearly, they’ve proven themselves,” she said. “The first competition in Colorado is when they got level champion and grand champion. They took everything. For the coaches, it means everything that we were able to bring home the medals and big wins.”
Favila said a stumble at one competition kept the team from being undefeated this year, but that was fixed by the time the team reached Orlando.
“We perfected it, and the girls worked harder,” she said.
“The next competition was when we won a full paid bid and grand champion,” Greeson said. “We brought home the hardware, but it was learning from and adjusting the mistakes.”
So how does Team Surge keep the momentum going for similar results? Favila said for parents, it means pushing kids to be better.
“We see their hard work two, three hours a week in the gym,” she said. “As coaches, they’ll definitely push harder because they believe what they have. They believe they can make it. I think it’s just work three times as hard to keep that momentum going.”
