On Friday, April 7, the Buccaneers captured the program’s ninth National Dance Association national championship with a victory in the Pom Open finals at the NCA & NDA Collegiate Cheer and Dance Championship in Daytona Beach, Fla.
“This year was definitely an amazing year,” Blinn head coach Sarah Barland Flisowski. “We train a lot. It’s a different animal when it comes to dance and team dance. The kids did really, really well. I couldn’t ask for a better showing than what our girls did at nationals.”
Blinn finished with a score of 64.18 (70 points max) and finished with an event score of 91.68 to earn the title. Iowa Central Community College placed second with a score of 87.80. Buccaneer dance also finished third in the Team Performance Open finals, falling 2.4 points shy of a second title. Four-year programs University of Texas at Dallas (first place) and Alma College (second place) placed just ahead of Blinn.
“We felt really good after the performance because we knew what we were trying to achieve as a team and how we had to work to achieve it,” freshman dancer Taylor Bearden said. “To have all of your hard work pay off, it was just a great feeling.”
Bearden and 16 other Blinn dancers took the floor for the Bucs, including Bryanna Aguilera, Daphne Cantu, Skylar Cox, Nataly Diaz, Jaia Johnson, Jocelynn Luna, Brianna Mendoza, Alexis Burchfield, Camila Corredor, Raven Guidry, Emily Hernandez, Macie Lindstrom, Devinne Oregon, Kalee Shelton, Jadaya Simien, and Lauren Rodriguez.
Blinn performed its Pom routine just minutes after learning the result of the Team competition, but Shelton, a freshman, said that outcome provided motivation as the team took the floor for its championship performance.
“Knowing everything we’ve overcome as a team to get to that point and win it all was amazing,” said Rodriguez, a freshman. “We found out that we didn’t win the Team Dance title just before we went to get ready for the Pom performance, and I think that lit a fire under us. We told ourselves that we had to put our eggs in a new basket and that’s what we did; we put our entire focus on the Pom performance and look what happened.”
Blinn cheer also had a strong showing in Dayton. The Bucs fell just .9907 points short of a seventh national championship, placing second to Trinity Valley Community College in the Advanced Small Coed Junior College category (97.1018 to Blinn’s 96.1111).
“We are rebuilding Blinn cheer back into what it once was, and this was a major step in that direction,” Barland Flisowski said. “I was thrilled with what we did; we were an eyelash from the title, and I think the only place to go from here is up.”
Barland, herself a former member of the Blinn dance team, now has 15 cheer and dance championships since taking over the programs in 2012. Barland said her teams’ outstanding performances on the season’s biggest stage bode well for what’s to come for the future of Blinn cheer and dance.
“It’s exciting because I know both programs are on the rise and are reestablishing themselves as teams that could win a national title every year,” added Barland Flisowski. “The kids that we have and the kids we will continue to recruit, we know the expectation of being at the top of the podium at the end of the year are going to stay.”
Blinn has competed in intercollegiate athletics since 1903 and captured 43 NJCAA national championships since 1987.
