By Glenn Billman, news staff

Northeastern’s cheerleading team triumphed at Boston Nationals and tumbled their way to the title of JAMfest Collegiate Champions Saturday and Sunday in Lowell, Massachusetts.

The team began its competition season, leaving behind the hardwood of Matthews Arena for the stage.

“It was really exhilarating in the moment,” said Samantha Vasco, a sophomore and member of the cheer team. “We weren’t sure how we were going to do, […] but we were glad to come out on top.”

The 20-person squad executed a 2 minute, 15 second routine packed with stunts, jumps, tumbling and dancing in front of a panel of 12 judges.

While Northeastern was the only team in the Collegiate All-Girl D1 category, the cheerleaders earned a score of 88 and beat out Bentley University and State University of New York at Oneonta for the highest collegiate score of the meet and the championship title.

Cheer divisions are determined by the genders of the competitors and the NCAA division of the school’s football team. For schools without a football team like Northeastern, they are separated by the division of their basketball teams.

“Stunts looked really good, the dance was sharp,” senior and co-captain Anna Wilhelm said. “There were definitely mistakes on both days, little things we could have worked on. Overall, I’m really proud of how the team performed. There was a lot of energy.”

Third-year co-captain Chelsea McGee said she was especially proud of the team’s performance given the women were without a coach from the beginning of the season in September, when the former coach stepped down, until January when Lizzie Goddard took up the position. In the interim, Wilhelm and McGee led the team with help from other returning members.

“Getting thrown into even being captain at all and then also being coach was definitely tough,” McGee said. “It was hard to be a teammate and also have a leadership role  because we wanted to get to know the new team and stuff, but also we had to kind of tell them what to do. It was weird to find a balance at first, but we’re really happy that we have a coach now.”

Another hurdle for the team was the lack of returners. Wilhelm said most of last year’s roster did not come back after a tough season. Fourteen of the members are rookies, and some of them have never competed or even cheered before. However, Goddard said the team’s lack of cheerleading experience didn’t show in competition.

“It was a good first showing for the girls, and they worked really, really hard so we were extremely proud of the performance they put on,” Goddard said. “You wouldn’t even have noticed that they didn’t cheer before. They did awesome.”

The cheer team will compete twice more this season: At the Advanced SPIRIT East Coast Classic on Saturday and Advanced SPIRIT Nationals April 15. Both competitions will be held in Providence, Rhode Island. Vascos said she anticipates facing tougher teams in Providence but believes Northeastern is up to the challenge.

“Our routine itself definitely has advanced stunting,” Vasco said. “There’s always room to make it a little more difficult, but I do think that it’s a well-choreographed routine, and as long as we hit it, we’ll do well. And we’ve hit it several times, so I have no doubt that we can do it.”

McGee said the advanced stunting the team displays at competitions is rarely seen by the Northeastern student body.

“It’s hard, because there’s a lot of regulations on what we can and can’t do on hardwood floors at basketball games, so we can’t really show off a lot of our cool, fun, difficult skills because of those regulations,” McGee said. “It would be nice for people to know we do compete and we can do really cool things, that they just don’t get to see all the time.”

Next year, McGee said she hopes to receive an invitation to the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA) Collegiate Cheer Championship. Before the end of her college career, she said she hopes the team qualifies for NCA Championship finals, which is known as the Bandshell.

“I’m really excited about our team,” McGee said. “Northeastern cheer hasn’t made it to the Bandshell in 10 years, so that’s our ultimate goal. We almost made it last year, we were like .02 away. If we could do that before my college career is over. I still have two more years after this – but the ultimate goal is definitely to make it to the Bandshell.”

Wilhelm said she was proud of how the team kicked off the first competition of her final season.

“I don’t know how we can beat this,” Wilhelm said. “The goal for the team is just to go out there and do our best and see if we can get another championship title.”