Leyden varsity cheerleading competition season is here. It’s been two years since the last time they have competed, and they’ve been using that time to focus more on improving their skills such as tumbling, stunts, and difficult cheers.

The squad can compete with up to 25 other teams in one day, so it is important to “grow as a team and to improve our scores each competition we go to,” Coach Laura Chihoski said.

Each year the competitions are held at different places with sectionals held at Rolling Meadows high school.

This Saturday, February 1st they have a sectionals competition at Rolling Meadows.

For sectionals “each team has a routine of 2 minutes and 30 seconds and the top 3 from that day move on to state and they are judged by a panel of judges on appearances, difficulty, tumbling, stunts, and voices as in how loud we are,” Coach Chihoski stated.

“Competition recently has grown so much and became a lot harder,” Chihoski said. “Each team we go against has full tumbling and very difficult stunts.”

Yet, she noted how this competition season she feels that “our team has the potential to be really good and to do well in competitions.”

Senior Linnea Virzi, cheerleadering captain, has been on the cheerleading team for all four years.

She noted that one of the the team’s biggest strengths this year is “that we work really good together as a team, and we all want to get better.”

Her hope is that this sense of teamwork will help them increase their competition scores during each competition they go to, as well as continuing to increase the difficulty of their stunts.