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    Fryer: Cheer for this sport that has its CIF-SS championships this weekend
    • January 23, 2025

    For years at high school basketball games, someone from one team’s cheerleaders would do a series of handsprings and then someone from the other team’s cheerleaders would do a longer series of handsprings.

    It was a form of competition, although no medals or trophies were rewarded.

    That changed a few years ago.

    The CIF Southern Section competitive cheer championships are being held Friday and Saturday.

    Yes, cheerleading is a CIF sport. The CIF Southern Section has held cheer championships since 2019.

    Yes, cheerleaders are athletes. Some of those moves they make during breaks of a basketball game are basically gymnastic floor exercises, but on a hardwood floor and not on that padded surface we see during the Olympics.

    Orange County cheer teams that won CIF-SS championships last season were Garden Grove, Mater Dei, Marina and Santa Margarita. This season’s CIF-SS Traditional Competitive Cheer Championships are at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside.

    Then comes the CIF State Cheer Invitational on Feb. 1 at Mira Costa High in Manhattan Beach, then the National High School Cheer Championships at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., Feb. 7 and 8. The national event has been going on for more than 40 years.

    Marina’s team last season that won a third straight CIF championship was a senior-heavy group. This year’s team has one senior returnee.

    “It’s a very dedicated group,” said Marina cheer coach Lexy Gutierrez. “We practice almost every day, getting in our extra reps.”

    Although a young team, Marina still finished second, to Woodbridge, in its division in last month’s UCA West Coast Challenge at UC Irvine. Other Orange County varsity winners there were Beckman, El Dorado, Los Alamitos, Santa Margarita and Villa Park.

    Gutierrez was a cheerleader at Marina and later at Long Beach State. As a cheer athlete and now a coach, she knows what it takes to excel at it.

    “These kids are athletes and they work extremely hard,” she said. “We’re in the weight room. We put them through everything that other sports athletes go through.”

    NOTES

    The three leaders for Orange County boys basketball player of the year are Santa Margarita junior guard Kaiden Bailey, Mater Dei junior guard Luke Barnett and Canyon senior forward Brandon Benjamin. …

    The list of candidates for All-County boys basketball first team is a long one. San Juan Hills 6-8 senior Mason Hodges moved up the list Wednesday when he scored 38 points with six 3-pointers and 10 rebounds in theStallions’ 77-66 win over San Clemente in a South Coast League game. San Juan Hills improved to 5-0 with the win over the Tritons, who are 3-1 in league. …

    Of all the transfer moves in Orange County football, the move of quarterback Ryan Hopkins from JSerra to Mater Dei could be the most significant one so far. Hopkins, who can run and throw with equal effectiveness, was All-Trinity League first team as a junior last season for JSerra. This past season’s Mater Dei quarterback Dash Beierly was a senior. …

    County football has a strong group of returning quarterbacks. Brady Edmunds of Huntington Beach was All-County first team this past season as a sophomore and San Juan Hills’ Timmy Herr was All-County third team as a junior. Other standout non-senior quarterbacks of the 2024 season are Luke Fahey of Mission Viejo, Travis Frazier of Esperanza, DJ Mitchell of La Habra, Noah Nam of Beckman, Tristan Zale of Trabuco Hills. …

    It is sad that three excellent county girls soccer players – Peyton Trayer of Santa Margarita, Zamorah Malinoski of Los Alamitos and Kai Tsakiris of Corona del Mar – are ineligible for the remainder of the season because they participated in a training camp in Brazil that was organized by a professional team. The rule that was violated reads: “A student shall become ineligible for CIF competition if he/she participates in any tryout for a professional team in any CIF-approved sport during the high school season of sport.” Parents and students should consider calling the CIF State or Southern Section office before getting involved in any outside-if-school activity, just to be safe. …

    The top two teams in the Orange County boys soccer Top 10 scored crucial wins Wednesday when No. 1 JSerra beat No. 3 Servite 4-0 and No. 2 Mater Dei beat Santa Margarita 5-2 in Trinity League games. JSerra is 6-0 and Mater Dei is 5-1 in league. They play each other at Mater Dei on Wednesday at 5 p.m. JSerra beat Mater Dei 4-0 at JSerra on Jan. 10. …

    This week’s Orange County girls soccer rankings that were published Monday have Santa Margarita at No. 1, JSerra at No. 2. On Tuesday, JSerra and Santa Margarita played to a 1-1 tie. …

    The Boras Classic South, the best high school baseball tournament in California, is March 25-28 at, as usual, JSerra and Mater Dei high schools. In addition to the host schools, other teams in it include Corona, La Mirada, Cypress, Huntington Beach and Santa Margarita. The winner of the Boras Classic South and the winner of the the Boras Classic North tournament meet in the Boras Classic championship game in San Diego on April 26.

    ​ Orange County Register 

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