- January 8, 2025
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Drama, intrigue, underdog stories and overcoming the odds — that is just a sampling of the busy weekend in the world of local competitive cheer teams who participated in the state championships in Gainesville.
From Friday, Jan. 31, to Saturday, Feb. 1, a handful of schools from the area took to the mat to showcase their talents for the last time this season and four went out with style.
Dr. Phillips brought home a state title in the small all-girl division, and Ocoee High grabbed a state title in the small division (non-tumbling). Meanwhile, Windermere Prep and Foundation Academy each finished state runners-up in the small tumbling division, and large non-tumbling division respectively.
To say that the last few years for the Panthers have been frustrating may be an understatement.
From 2009 to 2013, the Panthers became a cheer dynasty as they dominated their way to five straight state titles. Then, something happened — they became the proverbial bridesmaid instead of the bride, as the Panthers have landed runner-up finishes the last four years. It’s why winning the state title has the Panthers feeling good, head coach Samantha Hoffman said.
“It’s a long time coming, because we’ve had a run of runner-ups for the past four years, so we just missed winning it,” Hoffman said. “We just fell short every year — like by one-two hundredths of a point and it was always so, so close — so this year coming in first was a good thing.”
Unlike that first dynastic run at Dr. Phillips — which saw everyone come in with experience — many of the girls on the team arrived to the school with little to no experience in cheer.
Despite that fact, the girls worked hard and did what they had to do to finally grab that elusive state trophy by scoring an impressive 87.2.
“This is probably my most consistent group of cheerleaders that I’ve coached for 15 years in this program,” Hoffman said. “This is the first year that, to this competition, we have never had a fall in any of the competitions that we have been to.”
If you’ve followed the Ocoee cheer team, you’ll know that the Knights have dealt with a lot — injuries, athletes leaving out of the blue and so on.
Even though there were a few breakdowns here and there, the Knights never faltered, and it’s what makes this year’s state title — the first for the program since 2018 — so much sweeter, head coach Kristin Johnson said.
“It was a pretty incredible feeling,” Johnson said. “This team went through many, many challenges this season, but not once did they let it deter them from their goal, which was not even so much winning as much as they wanted to execute a perfect routine with no deductions.”
And that’s exactly what the Knights did on the mat, as they were flawless, with no deductions. They finished with a score of 84.8 — a full 4.7 points ahead of second-place Miramar.
Winning the state title was obviously huge for Johnson and her squad, but the thing Johnson will remember most from the weekend was the emotion and elation of the girls as they walked off the mat.
“When they were done and they knew that they had executed everything perfectly, they grabbed each other and there were a lot of tears,” Johnson said. “Everyone just kind of embraced each other crying out of pure excitement and joy that no matter what happened after that, they did exactly what they set out to do.”
When it comes to fledgling programs, it’s understandable that there will be struggles. In the case of Windermere Prep’s competitive cheer team that’s not the case.
The program — under the leadership of head coach Kari Land and assistants Brittani Fulmer and Nikki Sullins — exploded in its third year of existence by bringing home the runners-up trophy in the small-tumbling division by scoring a 77.
Last year the team finished in fourth place, which at the time was great, but this year they wanted a bit more, Land said.
“We told the girls, ‘Our goal is to do better than the year before,’ so we hoped to get fourth or better — we had confidence that we were going to place high,” Land said. “We’re all on the mat all huddled together… they call state runner-up and that was us, and the girls went crazy and us coaches went crazy. It exceeded our expectations.”
The win capped off a long day for the Lakers, who — before they could get to finals — had to participate in the semifinals in the morning before making it to finals. All of this after leaving Windermere at 6 a.m.
To have a young program do what it did is an impressive feat, but it’s the relationship building that the the coaching staff will look back on and remember from this breakout season, Fulmer said.
“That bond you build on the mat is life changing, so to see those girls finally build that and it all come together — they trusted each other — is something that, as a coach, is better than any placement you can get,” Fulmer said.
