The UCA cheer team flipped and kicked its way to two third-place wins during the National Cheerleading Association’s College Nationals.
The NCA event took place from April 11-13 in Daytona Beach, Florida.
“NCA is a huge competition with over 500 teams competing,” sophomore Stormey Jo Pemberton said. “I’m so proud of my teams for not only pushing through for ourselves, but we pushed through for each other and for our coach. We strived to represent the program we built and make UCA proud.”
The two UCA teams that garnered wins were advanced small coed and intermediate small coed.
Coach Antonio Anderson said, “We took two teams this year. It was kind of chaotic for me just because I was having to be in two places at once for some of the situations, but I think overall everyone had a great time and I think especially coming home with two third-place wins made it even better.”
The advanced small coed team earned its third-place spot with a raw score of 92.4333, an event score of 90.7708 and deductions worth 1.5 points.
Anderson said, “In the advanced division there were 12 teams, and they are teams of a very high caliber, and a lot of people don’t understand it comes down to tenths of points a lot of times. We got third and I think the team right underneath us was maybe two-tenths away from us.”
On the other side of the mat, the intermediate small coed team obtained a raw score of 86.7, an event score of 95.5764 and zero deductions.
“With our intermediate team, it was pretty much the same thing,” Anderson said. “They had about 13 or 14 teams in our division. And you know, to even get the top half of that is a big accomplishment.”
This year was the first time UCA cheer competed in intermediate small coed.
A reason for the Bears’ major success at college nationals this year was due to coach Anderson, who became the team’s coach in February 2023.
Pemberton said, “This being my second year on UCA’s cheer team, I feel as if there was more support as a team, especially from our coach, Antonio Anderson.”
Since joining the team, Anderson has put the team through a significant restructuring.
Several of Anderson’s changes include dropping early morning practices, as well as pushing athletes to take more responsibility and accountability for their actions.
“In years past it was one of those things that it didn’t matter if someone was late to practice or someone was doing things that they had no business doing,” Anderson said. The coach didn’t hold them to that standard of like, ‘Hey, this is a team and everyone has to do their part.’ So I think coming in and doing things like, ‘Hey, if someone’s late we have to run for them.’
“We have to condition for that if someone’s not doing this. There’s a consequence for those kinds of things. So I think it kind of helped them to learn to depend on each other a little bit more, which helped them to be a little bit more successful.”
Moving forward, Anderson hopes to help improve the team’s skills and overall dedication.
“I want people to look at the University of Central Arkansas cheer teams and be proud of it and just know that it’s a force to be reckoned with,” Anderson said.