Hudson Meets Challenge Again in Extending Championship Streak to 4
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
March 2, 2023
MOUNT PLEASANT – Hudson High School is going to need a bigger trophy case, and soon, the way its winter sports teams are piling up championships.
Hudson’s competitive cheer team won its fourth-straight Division 4 title Thursday at Central Michigan University’s McGuirk Arena, and the Tigers now have finished either first or second in the state seven years in a row.
“Do you want me to cry?” said 26th-year Hudson coach Kelly Bailey when asked about her emotions shortly after her team’s dominant 771.04-point performance, more than 25 points ahead of the field.
“We gave them some tough stuff each round and that added to the pressure, but they wanted the challenge and they wanted to do it. They pulled it off.”
Hudson’s cheer program is engaged in a healthy competition with the school’s wrestling program, which just five days earlier won its 10th Division 4 team championship over the past 14 years.
That kind of simultaneous success for two programs at the same school, in the same season, is remarkable – and the orange-and-black-clad Tigers fans were out in force Thursday afternoon in Mount Pleasant, just like they were last Friday in Kalamazoo.
Hudson produced the highest score in all three rounds of the Final, never allowing the other seven teams to gain momentum in an upset bid.
“There was a lot of pressure to win it again,” said Hudson senior Annalyse Ames, one of four returning first-team all-staters for the Tigers. “But I was more excited than nervous. I knew we would go out on the mat and kill it.”
The challenging routines led the way to the 771.04 winning score, which was close to the team’s season-best of 774.94, and much higher than its score at its Regional (740.38) and its season-average score (750.42).
Other returning all-state first-teamers for Hudson this winter were senior Cheyenne Eichler and juniors Rylie Bloomer and Victoria Hawkins. Seniors Ellie Bean, Shantzee Henderson and Isabella Moreno were second team all-state and junior Paige Clark was honorable mention in 2022.
Hudson’s roster was filled with upperclassmen, with seven seniors and seven juniors on the 19-athlete roster.
Emotions were all over the board for Hudson’s seniors, who never were outplaced by a Division 4 school in any competition during their four-year careers.
“I feel like I’m on top of the world and super sad at the same time,” said Eichler.
Gibraltar Carlson has the competitive cheer Finals record with six consecutive titles from 2011-16. Pontiac Notre Dame Prep (2014-18) and Rochester (1999-2003) both won five straight championships.
Michigan Center, which was up in Division 3 in 2022 and didn’t make the Finals, came back strong this winter and capped it with a runner-up trophy Thursday.
The Cardinals, who won the Cascades Conference and took second at their Regional behind Hudson, took second again at 745.20 points – just shy of their season-best of 745.94.
“I am so proud because these girls rose to a level today that they have not had all season,” said Michigan Center coach Jessica Trefry, who shares the head coaching duties with Bree Cash. “Hudson is an amazing team, but I can say that we brought our best today.”
Michigan Center, which has won five Finals championships, finished runner-up for the second time.
Adrian Madison (741.16) took third, followed by Hart (739.56) and Merrill (730.20).
Hudson, a small community in southeast Michigan with fewer than 3,000 residents, was for a long time best-known for its 72-game winning streak in football from 1968 to 1975.
But, no question, Hudson’s competitive cheer and wrestling programs have put the town back on the map.
“We feel the pressure to keep it going, for sure,” said Bailey, who is assisted by Lyndsi Bailey and Jacque Marry. “But the Finals is a little different, because once we’re here, we’re done learning and we’re done fixing.
“I told them just to go out there and have a blast.”
PHOTOS (Top) Hudson is 16 athletes strong during this round of Thursday’s Division 4 Final. (Middle) Michigan Center competes on the way to its runner-up finish.
Rochester Arrives Again on Top of D1
March 4, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
GRAND RAPIDS – Rochester’s run to a 14th MHSAA competitive cheer championship wasn’t as smooth as the build up to number 13 a year ago.
Of course, that’s almost always going to be the case when comparing to a perfect run like the Falcons enjoyed during 2015-16, when they won all of their competitions.
But a few bumps along the way this winter made Rochester’s latest addition to its record title total special as well. A team that usually doesn’t pull up underclassmen had five. The Falcons had 15 seniors two seasons ago and 13 last winter, but only eight this time. There were only 23 athletes total on the team, making it the school’s smallest since 2000. And by Dec. 10, another perfect run was out of reach, after a third place at an invitational at Stoney Creek won by Sterling Heights Stevenson, Friday’s Division 1 Final runner-up, with 16 more points than Rochester scored that day.
“What happened last year was very out of the ordinary. That was a huge blessing for us,” Rochester senior Megan McMurray said. “This year was a little more of a normal path that we usually take. We did place low in a few competitions, but we rose every time that we fell, and our main goal was just to blast it out during our playoffs, and we did just that. And we got the results (again) that we got last year.”
Rochester won Friday’s Final at the Grand Rapids DeltaPlex with a score of 789.02, nearly two points ahead of Stevenson and four more than the rest of the field. That overall score was the third highest posted in Division 1 this season, and the Falcons’ Round 3 total of 320.70 tied its division-best score set earlier this winter.
And it made Rochester a repeat champion for the first time since finishing a three-season run at the top in 2007. This is the fourth time the Falcons have strung together multiple championships since winning the first three Class A Finals from 1994-96, and it’s something that’s becoming increasingly difficult at the Division 1 level as the state’s biggest schools continue to close the gap.
For example: As longtime coach Susan Wood noted, all eight teams Friday hit their Round 3 routines – and that made the Falcons unsure if they had scored enough to pull off the title.
It’s almost tradition for teams to leave the mat after Round 3 and fold into hugs and sometimes tears. Last season, the Falcons did so knowing they’d clinched; this time, McMurray said, those tears came from pulling off a routine that Wood had designed even tougher than a year ago – and even though McMurray and her teammates weren’t sure if they had the title in hand.
That refusal to “water down” the difficulty, even for a newer group like this one, is part of Wood’s philosophy. It can come with a little higher risk – but paid off again Friday with the highest reward.
“Cheerleaders do millions of repetitions of things over and over and over again to get the muscle memory where it needs to be, but with this group we had to be very mentally tough to do it,” said Wood, who has led the team 36 seasons and to all of its championships. “Because physically, I think a lot of these teams are the same. But mental toughness in newer kids is harder to pull out – so that was one of our big battles.”
The seniors – including three-year varsity athletes McMurray, Sydney Asuncion and Sam Ellison – tried to prepare their younger teammate that this might be a rockier road than the perfect recent past.
In McMurray’s words, the Falcons “understood that this was going to be a completely different journey.”
But the team started hitting all of its three rounds at the Oakland Activities Association Red finale Feb. 4, finishing five points better than a field including eventual Division 1 finalists Stoney Creek, Rochester Adams and Lake Orion.
“We were always physically capable of doing things, but a lot of the younger girls were a little bit shy and timid, so a lot of the seniors had to get them out of their shells, make some great personal connections,” McMurray said. “By the end of the season we were in full grind, kicking it, ready to go.
“It felt amazing to be part of the team that brought it back last year. It feels even more amazing to be the team that’s keeping it going.”
But one opponent that should make that streak harder to continue is Stevenson, which tied its best finish ever with its first runner-up performance since taking second in 2011. And the Titans did so with only one senior on the team – and nine freshmen competing.
Stevenson’s score of 787.06 was its best this season by two points, and its Round 3 320.20 was just a half point shy of Rochester’s meet and season best.
The Titans finished seventh two seasons ago and third in 2016.
“We had that uphill battle right from the start, which makes this even sweeter,” said coach Brianna Verdoodt of preparing her young roster. “The amount of work and push and dedication and the grit that went into getting them here. The real, real hard work was put in this year. So now it’s just starting off and keeping things fresh. We watched them truly become a team over the year … this was the best day they’ve had as a team, even off the mat as well.”
Grandville, last season’s runner-up, finished third at 785.34. Stoney Creek was fourth at 783.10 and Rochester Adams, at the Finals for the first time since 1997, finished fifth at 782.66. Hudsonville, Lake Orion and Brighton rounded out the standings.
PHOTOS: (Top) Rochester performs during Friday's Division 1 Final at the DeltaPlex. (Middle) A Grandville cheerleader is raised by her teammates during their round.