Paly cheerleaders are celebrating their third place performance at the United Spirit Association (USA) Spirit Nationals at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim on March 18. The squad performed the most difficult routine they have ever done at the competition, according to coach Leigh Cambra.

“They always perform well at competitions,” Cambra said. “The team has always hit their routine but we usually play it safe. We challenged ourselves for nationals and they stepped up to the challenge.”

Senior Kehri Fisher said, “[We did] really well considering we did better than we ever practiced.”

Emotions ran high before the competition but that may have fueled the performance, said Fisher.

“The seniors were all crying because we knew it was our last competition,” Fisher said. “So we thought, ‘let’s put our best into [the performance].’”

The Paly squad qualified for Spirit Nationals in September at a regional competition in Santa Cruz. This was the earliest the squad had qualified for nationals, according to Cambra.

Fisher said qualifying early in the year gave the squad an opportunity to get comments on their routine at other competitions.

“We got to go to other regional competitions with our routine and get feedback,” Fisher said. “Since we already knew we were going to nationals we wanted to get as much feedback as possible.”

Since then, the Paly cheerleaders have been training non-stop.

“We have to practice at a gym in Sunnyvale,” Cambra said. “We also have a tumbling coach that has been working on everyone’s tumbling this year. Hopefully he will continue with us next year.”

Next year the squad hopes to compete just as well.

“This was the most difficult routine they’ve ever done at a competition,” Cambra said. “This is the first time we’ve come back from nationals really excited to start preparing for the next year.”