This past week our very own Ashland University Cheerleaders and Dancers performed at the Cleveland Cavaliers game vs. the Atlanta Hawks. This is the third year in a row that they have had the privilege to perform at halftime for a Cavs game.

“I think the girls did a fantastic job at halftime,” head cheerleading and dance coach, Vicki Wirick said. “We heard so many comments from the fans and even the staff that our squads were better than the Cavs dancers; that’s always a nice compliment to receive.”

Wirick has been the coach for the past 10 years. She started off with 8 cheerleaders and over the years expanded the program to 25.

“I saw some improvement towards the end but there really wasn’t need for much improvement because the girls were very good from the beginning,” Wirick said.

This year there are 25 cheerleaders and 17 dancers and 3 of these girls are on both teams. The girls spent a lot of time in preparing for this big event. It took about three months to get the whole routine down; including choreographing and then practicing the routine over and over until they hit it perfect.

The routine they performed was a constant five minutes of dancing, tumbling, running, and stunting so once it came to their last few practices before the game, the stress settled in.

“It was stressful learning it and practicing it but our team works really well together so things worked out smoothly,” Cheerleader, Samantha Powel said. This is Powell’s second year performing at the Cavs game so she was more excited than nervous this year since she already knew what to expect.

This year was Molly Leonard’s first time performing at the Cavs halftime so she felt a little different than Powell did.

“When I first got there I was really scared when I realized how many people were actually sitting up in the stands, but once we took the floor the lights were so bright that you could only see the first few rows so I was not as nervous,” Leonard said.

All of the girls are hoping that next year, for the fourth time in a row, they will be asked back by the Cavs to perform at halftime. The cheerleaders and dancers have both been doing a great job this year on their separate performances but once they came and performed together as a whole at the Cavs game, their routine was amazing.