DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - The Piedmont University cheerleading team brought home fourth place at the NCA Nationals event last week, overcoming challenges along the way for a strong finish. 

Hear from Coach Cristen Rabern on the Lions performance and bounce-back effort. 

"On Thursday, we competed in Prelims, which counts for 25% of your overall score for the competition. We did not perform our best and came out with 2.25 points in deductions, including two bobbles, two stunt falls, and an athlete fall. At the end of prelims, we were sitting in 9th place out of 19 teams. The girls were discouraged, but they still had a lot of fight left in them and we knew that we could show the judges a better routine than we had that day.

On Friday, the girls pulled together as a team and encouraged each other and rooted for each other even harder. We were able to put out a better routine on Friday and brought our score up by an entire three points from a 90.86 to a 93.31. Finals count for 75% of your total score, so we ended the competition with a score of 92.70.
 

The dedication of the athletes and their determination to prove themselves is what helped us jump an incredible FIVE places to end the competition in 4th place out of 19 teams. Our final score put us only 0.85 points behind 3rd place and 1.08 points behind 2nd place, which goes to show how close this division was this year. Additionally, we were competing against several teams with long-established programs and several who had come down from the advanced division. We were able to move to an entirely new bracket on the scoresheet with our stunt difficulty this year and we were able to compete with a full floor (20 athletes) despite having several out with injuries.  
 

As a coach, I am most impressed with how the team pulled together in such a stressful time. With emotions, tensions, and adrenaline high, it would have been incredibly easy for them to turn against each other and to begin blaming each other for mistakes made. Instead, they strengthened their resolve to do better, and encouraged each other even harder. At warm-ups before our Finals performance, if a stunt group looked like they were struggling, the rest of the team rallied around them. I am extremely proud of their amazing comeback, but I am even more proud of their character as a team."