By: Taylor Phillips
Sports Editor
Mira Costa seniors Kelsey Ligos and Lauren Demirjian cheered their way into 2020 and rang in the New Year at London’s New Year’s Day Parade.
Ligos, who joined the cheer team this season, and Demirjian, who is a four year veteran and captain on the Mira Costa cheer team, were selected to travel to London, England over the winter break to cheer and dance in the London New Year’s Parade. Demirjian and Ligos learned about the opportunity through the Universal Cheer Association [UCA] summer camp in San Diego, where the girls spent four days learning new routines and cheers. Dermirjian and Ligos signed up to be apart of the audition process at the beginning of camp.
“There were multiple teams at the camp, including our team,” Dermirjian said. “There were probably 10 girls from each team who auditioned for the [All- American Honor] and the opportunity to go to London. There were eight girls total from our team who tried out, too.”
To be a part of the All-American program, Dermirjian and Ligos had to compete against other cheerleaders in the camp. The girls were taught a dance and had to perform the dance in front of the UCA staff and their fellow teammates for judging.
“[For the auditions], we learned about a minute dance in two days,” Ligos said. “After we learned the dance, we performed the routine in front of our teammates and the UCA staff. On the last day of camp, [the UCA staff] announced who made it.”
Earning the All-American Honor allowed Ligos and Dermirjian to have the opportunity to go to London over the winter break and perform at the London New Year’s Day Parade. They had the opportunity to represent Costa and perform in front of millions of people.
“It was really cool to see all the other cheerleaders from the United States and other people from different countries,” Demirjian said. “It was such an awesome experience for us.”
Since the participants of the parade were from all around the country, the girls learned the routine for the parade through an email sent to all the participants. This way, the girls were able to learn the routine without meeting before the actual performance.
“About a month before the trip, [UCA] sent us a video,” Ligos said. “We had one practice with everyone [in London] that was about an hour and a half, and [the UCA staff] put us in spots and we went over the routine.”
The girls left for London on Christmas Eve and on the day before the parade, all the participants met to quickly go over the routine and be set in formations by the UCA staff. On New Year’s Day, the girls performed and walked in the parade in front of millions of people from around the world.
“[At the parade] we would walk and stop at certain stands to perform our routine, and then keep walking,” Demirjian said. “There were four groups of cheer girls, and there were about 400 girls all together. There were about 150 girls in our group.”
Dermirjian, Ligos and the Mira Costa cheer team are now focusing on their trip to Florida in February for the National Championships. The team has a competition in January before Nationals at Walt Disney World, and the Mustangs hope to perform well at the competition in January and at the National Championships, according to Demirjian and Ligos.
“The parade was super fun because there was a crowd of 600,000 people,” Ligos said. “We were also able to do tourist things there too, so it was a lot of fun.”
Leave a Reply