This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
02/05/2022 11:00 PMAfter going two years without competing, the North Haven cheerleading team returned to the mat with just one athlete who had any varsity experience this winter. Head Coach Kathleen Crisafi said that the Nighthawks have been resilient in every situation all season long, and their perseverance paid off with a solid performance and a fourth-place finish at the SCC Championship at East Haven High School on Feb. 5.
North Haven began training for its season last September. The Nighthawks started off with minimal varsity experience and hadn’t performed or done a stunt in two years. At the first practice, Coach Crisafi felt it was like starting back at square one.
“It was difficult this year. We haven’t had a competition season in two years. The last time we competed was March of 2020. In 2020 and 2021, we graduated all of our experienced varsity athletes,” Crisafi said. “When we were putting together this year’s team, we had one athlete with varsity experience. Starting the varsity team, it was like we were at square one.”
As North Haven approached the SCC Championship, Coach Crisafi said that her team had grown immensely. While there were some days of struggles, Crisafi felt that this year’s squad never gave up and came back stronger every time.
“To say they exceeded our expectations would be minimal. They have grown immensely—as a team, as individuals, as athletes. They learned how to work together,” said Crisafi. “The stunts they’re doing on a daily basis amazes us. We do have bumps in the road. Sometimes practices don’t go how we want them to. But this group picks themselves up by their bootstraps and works just as hard, if not harder. They’re a great, great group of kids.”
One of the reasons why the Nighthawks have been working so hard is because the team’s athletes decided that they were going to hit the ground running this season. Instead of using the two years off as an excuse to take things slow, Coach Crisafi and the Nighthawks decided to instill high-level stunts, some of which are typically seen at the college level.
It took months to perfect these routines, especially since most of North Haven’s cheerleaders had never performed a varsity stunt, let alone one a collegiate one. However, Crisafi said that neither the coaching staff nor the athletes wanted to lower the bar, and that everyone was willing to put in the work to succeed on the mat.
“We had to get the skill level back. We decided that even though we had a year off, we weren’t going to lower the bar on what we expected from them and what they expected from themselves,” Crisafi said. “We had kids who were doing JV level stunts two years ago, and we asked them to do very technical, high skill, high school, borderline college level stunts. Those are the stunts that they do. It takes repetition, muscle memory, and endurance to get them to perfection.”
All of the skills that North Haven had been working on were on display when the team competed at the SCC Championship last weekend. The Nighthawks posted a team score of 80.85 points to finish in fourth place among the 12 teams that participated in the meet. This was the first time that North Haven competed this season, and Coach Crisafi said it was the first time that any team she’s coached topped the 80-point mark in its first performance of the year.
“We were extremely happy with their performance. This was the first time we hit the mat this year. We were thrown into fire,” said Crisafi. “The coaching staff and kids are very happy with the performance. There are some things we need to be more confident in doing, but we’re happy they went out there. They did it well, and they were proud of themselves.”
The North Haven cheerleading competition team features senior competition captains Isabella Izzo and Maxine Samperri, senior gameday captains Courtney Ciszewski, Rebecca Anastasio, and Arianna Stewart; juniors Vianca Pham, Jenna Roby, and Jazmin Teclechiel; and sophomore Ava Guarniere. Samperri was the only senior with varsity experience coming into the season.
Following the SCC Championship, Stewart, Izzo, and Roby were all named to the All-SCC Team for North Haven. Anastasio won the SCC’s Cheerleading Merit Award, which is a character-based award voted on by every coach in the conference.
Crisafi said that North Haven nominated its All-SCC athletes in part due to their tumbling abilities. However, she added that everyone on the team has a different job, and that everybody does their job with aplomb.
“It was so hard to nominate the three that were going to be nominated for All-SCC. They’re all so equal in what they bring to the program,” Crisafi said. “It’s difficult to choose. They all bring something strong and have different jobs. They do their job well. Those three are our strong tumblers. They all worked hard on tumbling.”
Going forward, Coach Crisafi and her athletes are looking to tighten up their routine in order to put on their best performance of the year at the State Championship on Saturday, March 5. Crisafi said that North Haven is blazing a trail of resilience this season and, after turning in a solid showing at SCCs, the team wants even more.
“The word to describe them would be resilience. They had high expectations for themselves, and they continued to work,” said Crisafi said. “If I asked them if they were proud of how they performed, they would say yes, but that they aren’t satisfied. We know we can do more, and we want to do more. Every day, they’re never satisfied where they are. When they made those stunts look effortless, that speaks of their resilience.”
The North Haven cheer squad’s roster also includes Emma Baichulall, Aubrey Bessette, Brooklyn Bonner, Elle Burke, Gianna Carrano-Lanza, Lexy Coppola, Abby Crowder, Jennie DeMennato, Francesca Keefe, Caylin Newson, Kylie Signore, Emily Vece, and Alexa Wargo.