It's competitive cheer season! And 18 girl's from the Hazleton Area Cougars team are once again District champions in the medium varsity division.
Lindsey Maduro was once a squad member now she's coaching the team in her second season.
"This is a very special team. This is my 2nd year as head coach, so it's a good year we are really starting to get into a routine of things and how I want things to go," said Lindsey.
How much work do you put into this? We are in here mostly four days a week, plus games, and competitions so it's pretty tough," said Jessica Ward.
A 2 1/2 minute routine can take months of practice working on choreography, stunts, tumbling and cheering. These girl's will have it all down for states.
"This is only my second year on this team I was actually on JV the year before, so I had Lindsey for three years. She is an amazing coach. She encourages us to do our best. I love this team," said Nicole Ritz.
"They have a cheer that we just starting doing last year, but it seems to catch on this year. And last year we started to use our actual school color Scarlett. When in the previous years we've used red, silver, and white. We just thought that it would catch on a little bit more because there are so many other schools that just use the simple red and white," again said Lindsey.
This Hazleton team is on to states for the 5th season in a row and will compete at the Giant Center and then in February it's down to Orlando for the Universal Cheer-leading Association National Championships going up against some of the best teams in the country.
"How excited are you to go down to Hershey again? It's really good. I hope we do better than we did last year hopefully. And then Orlando. Are you excited about that? Oh! definitely. It's my last year so I hope to leave it with the finals," again said Jessica.
"Scarlett...White...Cougar...Pride," said the Hazleton Competitive Cheer squad.
Steve Lloyd reporting for Newswatch 16 sports from Luzerne County.