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Cheer Brings Home the Title

By Sam Lepa - AD, 01/29/24, 2:15PM CST

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It has been years in the making, but now it is a reality

The Cardinal Competition Cheer team competed at the St. Paul River Center on Saturday in the Class A State Cheer Competition.  

Class A Title

It is hard to live in Annandale and not know the cheer team or someone associated with it.   The program has found a resurgence since coaches Sarah Onstad and Melissa (Missy) Hardin started to build our fall sideline team growing the team to over 30 girls with 3 levels including a highly successful cheer camp this fall with over 80 elementary aged girls.   The thought came to start a competition team and the program was blessed to add Kirstin Petty, who brought with her years of high level competition cheer knowledge from her time at Maple Grove.   

The school board officially approved the sport last year and they were off with some big goals of making nationals and a state tournament.   The first year was a great success and the team finished 4th in the state, but their goals were set for this year to make nationals and win a state title.   This past fall the team met goal #1 by winning the Minnetonka regional and qualifying for nationals where they will compete in Orlando, Florida next weekend.  

The final goal was to improve on their 4th place finish and win a state title.   The team had to perform twice once in the preliminaries just to make the finals.  The team entered the finals on the class A tournament with Delano, NHREG, DeLaSalle, Jackson County Central, and Kenyon-Wanamingo.   The team ended up winning the competition by less than 2 points which as Coach Onstad put it, is about as close as it can get.