Can the Grenadiers make it a three-peat?
It was practice as usual on Wednesday for Elk Grove High School's coed cheerleading team, but the pressure is mounting as members try to defend their state championship starting today in Bloomington.
The Grenadiers are the state's only two-time defending cheerleading champs, having won the coed division both times since the Illinois High School Association began sanctioning competitive cheerleading as a sport in 2006.
On Friday, they make their case for a three-peat, trying to advance from the preliminary round today to Saturday's finals.
They will be among the more than 100 teams from across the state converging on U.S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington for the IHSA competitive cheerleading state finals.
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"It's going to be very, very difficult," says coach Jeff Siegal. "One of our best tumblers is out with an injury, so we'll be low on tumbling, but we'll have to pull out all the stops on our stunting."
Teams are competing in four divisions: small, medium and large school divisions, as well as coed. Suburban schools look to be among the contenders in nearly all of them.
Among the coed teams alone, Siegal points to Downers Grove South, coached by Gina Dreyden, as the favorite. Local contenders include Libertyville, which finished second on Saturday behind Elk Grove at the Lake Park sectional in Roselle, as well as Streamwood and Palatine high schools.
Among the medium-size schools, Antioch High School enters the finals as the sectional champion after taking first at Lake Park -- though the cheerleaders acknowledge that they enter Friday's preliminaries with a clean slate, just like every other team.
"This is the most talented squad I've had in my 15 years here," says Antioch coach Robin Gwinn. "But while their talent is huge, they have to go out and sell their school.
"They have three minutes to sell themselves," Gwinn adds of her team, which placed sixth at state last year. "And a dropped stunt, or a hand down, and they won't move on (from the preliminary round to the finals). It's as simple as that."
Antioch leads a list of suburban qualifiers that includes Wauconda High School, last year's third-place team, which took second at sectionals ahead of Vernon Hills in third, Grant High School from Fox Lake in fourth and Grayslake North in fifth.
Among large division schools, Stevenson High School hopes this is its year. The Patriots took first place at one of the sectional competitions at Lake Park, edging Maine South, Glenbard West and Maine West high schools.
"This is our 21st year going to state, between the IHSA and (Illinois Cheerleading Coaches' Association) and we've never won it," says coach Jill Freitag. "This year, the girls are determined to win it."
In the other sectional competition held at Lake Park last weekend, the Lancers repeated as sectional champions at their own event, earning the highest score among both sectional flights.
Rounding out the top five were Lake Zurich in second, Barrington in third, Conant in fourth and Jacobs in fifth.
All of their routines take on bigger proportions once they reach U.S. Cellular Coliseum. The nearly two-year-old arena seats 6,000, and last year the event sold 10,000 tickets for both days of action.
Officials with the Bloomington-Normal Area Convention Visitors Bureau see it as a boon as well. They are expecting as many as 7,000 visitors to the area for the state competition, and they expect it to pump in as much as $750,000 to the local economy.