Cheering on a national stage

Across the U.S., there are communities with renowned high school varsity cheerleading teams. But few, if any, have two championship squads separated by a six-minute drive.

The cheerleading program at General Douglas A. MacArthur High School is a 2018 Universal Cheerleaders Association National High School Cheerleading Championship Medium Varsity Division II finalist. Wantagh High School boasts a three-time county championship cheer team, which hit four perfect routines in the UCA National Championship’s Small Varsity Division II group.

Both teams finished the season with high expectations for next year.

Warriors perform with perfection

Matt Schneyer, Wantagh’s second-year varsity head coach, joined the Warriors after coaching Sachem East High School to a state championship. He came in just as Wantagh’s program won a county title. Yet not even he expected the team to perform the way it did at the nationals.

“I’ve never seen an actual team do that before,” Schneyer said. “To have four zero hits was wild … There were no words to describe it.”

Brenda Martin, one of the Warriors’ cheer captains, recalled the moment when the squad ended its final routine, describing it as unforgettable. “We were all hugging each other,” Martin said, “and it makes all the hard work and everything we went through the entire season worth it.”

After the nationals, the Warriors worked on flashier stunts for a week and a half before the county and state championships, as differing scoring systems called for different routines. Schneyer and his team were pleased to retain their Nassau County title, but were disappointed to finish second at the state championship for the second straight year. “Going undefeated in Nassau County, though, I couldn’t have asked for a better season,” he said.

Young Generals break a nationals curse

Jacqueline Day, who usually coaches MacArthur’s junior varsity program, took the reins of the varsity squad midseason, inheriting a young team that lost a dozen seniors last June. “So it was a lot of new rookies that we had to put together to make new stunt groups in,” Day said.

Stunt groups — typically made up of five people, based on skill level — are crucial to a cheer team’s success. Teams earn the most points if they perform high-flying stunts at a near-perfect level.

Day said that her girls adjusted quickly to more demanding and impressive stunts. It was that adaptability, along with three-hour daily practices, that helped the young Generals earn a national tournament bid at the UCA Empire Regional competition. It also helped them reach another goal: making it to the national tournament’s finals last Sunday.

“There were a lot of tears,” Jordan Tirano, a three-year MacArthur Varsity cheer captain, said. “I was just so amazed, because it felt like an ongoing curse — that we were just never going to make it. And this year we pulled through.”

Looking ahead to 2018-19

Although the Generals and Warriors are done for the season, they will begin their 2018-19 campaigns within the next month. Wantagh will begin its offseason training at the end of April. It is losing a third of its squad to graduation, but Schneyer is confident in the team’s ability as the program expands.

The five graduating seniors “left their legacy,” she said, “so it’s a big legacy that [the others] will have to fill. But it will be worth it in the end.”

MacArthur also plans to hold open gym sessions in April, starting with weekly tumbling classes and recruiting Levittown District middle school students into the program.

“Nothing in life is going to get handed to you,” Day said of those who want to be a part of MacArthur’s varsity program next year. “If you want it, you have to work for it.”