The Meadows School's varsity cheer squad participated in the 2006 Silver State Spirit Championships held March 4 at Carson High School in Carson City before going on to the 2006 USA Dance/Drill Nationals held March 17-18 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif.
The Mustangs won three divisions in Class 2A at the state competition and had a first- and a sixth-place individual finish in the national event.
Under the direction of first-year coach Alicia Capanna, the Mustangs won the all-girl stunt, hip-hop and jazz divisions in the state championship, which was not sanctioned by the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association.
All nine members of The Meadows varsity squad -- senior captain Gabriella Capanna, juniors Chantel Hopper, Katy Gale, Ariana Drexler and Alyssa Rice, sophomores Ali Yuman and Brittany Karcher, and freshmen Devyn Coskey and Casey Marek -- helped win the three divisions at state. The Meadows also won the academic award in Class 2A, boasting a 3.55 grade-point average.
To qualify for the nationals, the cheer squad participated in the regional competition in January at Green Valley High School.
"I had three girls compete in the solo category and then the whole team competed in the character dance division," said coach Capanna, older sister of Gabriella and a 2002 graduate of The Meadows, as well as being captain of the team in her junior and senior years. "We took first in the character dance division at regionals, which qualified for nationals and the championship. And then two of my three girls took first and second in the soloist category, and that includes 4A, 3A -- everybody."
Marek won the individual solo category at regionals, while teammate Hopper finished second.
Capanna, a former Class 2A pole vault champion -- she vaulted 10 feet in her senior year -- and captain of the Mustangs' track team in her senior year, was instrumental in the school's first-ever state championship, in which some 50 schools entered in seven different categories: show, performance, coed, all-girl stunt, pom, hip-hop and jazz.
"It's been a long time in the making," she said. "I had tried to push for it (in high school) and obviously, just being a high school student wasn't enough to get it going. But I know they've been trying to do preparations since my senior year. We've been trying to do this for a long time.
"The biggest stereotype that cheerleaders are trying to fight is that it's not a sport and they're not athletes."
The new coach said she was thrilled with how her girls did in Carson City.
"They couldn't have done better. They did amazing," she said. "We went up there really prepared."
After competing in the state championships early last month, The Meadows headed to California to compete in the nationals, where the team took third place in the championship character dance division.
"(Championship) character dance is a new division this year," Capanna said. "They've never had it before, and in my opinion we should have won. But that's me. I'm biased, of course. They couldn't have done any better. They nailed everything in the routine. I was very proud of them."
Bringing home the national title trophy to Summerlin was freshman Marek, who won her super dancer division by topping the next four-highest finishers who all hailed from California.
"She's great. I love her. She's a tremendous athlete," Capanna said. "She has a very athletic physique and she's very muscular -- very little fat to her at all. And she has a gymnastics background just as well as dance -- she's danced her entire life at Dance West -- and just the combination of the two has really made her stand out.
"She wears her heart on her sleeve and you see it when she dances. The judges obviously picked up on that as well and loved her."
In the solo champion division, which was won by Erin Stahmer of Homestead High School in Cupertino, Calif., The Meadows' Hopper finished sixth.
"She was outstanding," Capanna said of Hopper. "Watching her will blow you away. Her facials are amazing and she can turn more than anyone I've ever seen. She's got a very unique style about her, she's very aggressive when she dances. She did outstanding. That was probably one of the best performances I've ever seen her do."
Capanna said the performances of Marek and Hopper in Anaheim exceeded all expectations.
"I wasn't expecting that at all," she said. "There were like 80 girls in Chantel's category and 60 girls or something in Casey's category, so they beat out a lot of girls. They were amazing."
While describing the squad's workout regimen, the coach sounded more like a football coach.
"My girl's practices start with a mile and half run and then we do 200 meters of lunges," she said. "Our practices are really strenuous."
All in all, the coach said she is thrilled with her versatile and somewhat young team.
"We actually have a very diverse group of lots of different talents and I wanted to showcase all of that, so to speak, in all the routines," Capanna said. "We have five out of nine girls that can tumble, with a gymnastics background, which is extremely rare to find. To have more than half the squad that can tumble is really, really cool. And then I have four girls with a jazz background, so they know how to turn and jump and kick and all that stuff. So we got really lucky. We have a lot of talent this year."
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