Three cheers for Mount Sinai, state champs

They’ve been national champions. They’ve been one of the top programs on Long Island. And now, Mount Sinai’s cheerleading team has accomplished something no other high school team had done in New York high school history.

The Mustangs left Syracuse on March 5 with championship hardware from the very first state high cheerleading school tournament.

“It’s actually really cool to think that we just won states and the other teams in our school have won states,” said senior Lia Maniaci. “It was cool to finally have won the same thing they have.”

After cheerleading was sanctioned by the New York State Public High School Athletic Association last year as an official sport, this was the first season that culminated with a championship tournament.

Mt. Sinai always knew it had top athletes on its cheerleading squad, having won a national tournament in Orlando in February. But they were unsure how the state’s new scoring system would affect their winning tradition.

“It was always a sport to us,” said senior Sam Kollmer. “But most people, they just kind of looked at us like the girls that kind of just threw people around. It wasn’t really considered a sport so nobody took us seriously.”

Mt. Sinai didn’t feel it had perfect routines during the national championship, at least not like throughout the season, Maniaci said. The cheerleaders anxiously awaited the results but once the second-place school was revealed and the Mustangs realized they won, they were ecstatic.

“We were all so nervous at first,” said senior Delaney Mulligan. “It’s like you’re choked up with the fear like, ‘Did you win? Did you not?’ and then hearing Mt. Sinai won, you’re so excited and everyone’s excited with happiness and you just want to feel that moment forever.”

But the Mustangs knew they had unfinished business. They returned to Long Island for some of the toughest practices the cheerleaders ever experienced before winning the state championship.

“They were really tiring,” Maniaci said. “They were definitely the hardest practices we had all season but it needed to be that way in order to win.”

This was the first and only opportunity for the 10 seniors to win a state championship. They weren’t going to let that slip away.

“It really is just an amazing feeling to be able to be a part of the first ever,” Mulligan said. “It’s really just a feeling like no other.”

Kollmer was a four-year varsity cheerleader. She won two national championships and placed top-three in two more. Now, she can call herself a state champion.

“Winning is always sweet and it’s just so much different this year because it was my last year and we went out with a bang,” she said. “It was really amazing. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”