Saints Defeat the Bulldogs in a Stunt Game

The San Dimas High School Stunt Team played their rivals, West Covina High School, on March 22, 2023. WCHS has been the Saint’s toughest competitor in their league for the past couple of years. The Saints can never be too confident when playing WCHS because there’s always a chance they can come back. This was the first league game of the season and they were able to come out with a win. 

Stunt is an emerging girl’s sport, it has the same elements as a competition cheer routine besides the crowd leading part. Two teams go head to head doing the same routine and whoever executes it better gets the point. It is broken down into 4 quarters: partner stunts, pyramids and tosses, jumps and tumbling, and in the fourth quarter they put those all together based on the level. Each level gets increasingly harder and goes up to level six. 

Starting off the first quarter with partner stunts, the Saints had possession so they got to choose the first routine. When a team has possession, they want to pick the routines they’re best at to get the point. They chose partner stunt four and won the point. Since the Saints won that point, they kept possession and got to call another one of their best routines, and they tied for the point. With a good start to the game, the Saints led 4-1 at the end of the first quarter.

The second quarter, pyramids and tosses, began with routine five and the Saints got the point. As the quarter went on, the Saints were doing very well and executed the stunts to the best of their ability. With gaining every point, one of the points being a tie with WCHS, San Dims led 8-2 going into the third quarter. “Going into halftime I did not expect the score to have that big of a difference, but I knew we still had to do our job for the next half of the game,” said sophomore, Ireland Ries.  

During halftime, both teams are given eight minutes to warm up tumbling for the third quarter. “The third quarter is mostly based on individual skill since it’s jumps and tumbling; we have strong tumblers, so this quarter doesn’t get me stressed,” said Coach King. Being confident in her athletes, Coach King is put at ease and lets her athletes do their job. As they expected, the Saints did as they were expected and were able to get all four points. At the end of the quarter, the Saints increased their lead to 12-2. 

The fourth quarter is where the routines get combined based on the level, and this is a place where each team can make the most points. For the first three quarters, they play four routines each but for this quarter they only do three because the routines are being combined. In this part of the game, the teams want to call the routines they have won the most in the game. The Saints were ready for WCHS to call any of the routines because they had been doing well the whole game. The final score of the game was 19-7; the Saint’s first league game was a success and secured a big win against their rivals. 

The win against WCHS was a good way for the Saints to start their season and it gave them confidence because they felt as if they weren’t as good as they could be, but they proved to themselves that they can.