Winning one state title is an impressive feat. Winning two championships back-to-back? That’s when you know a program has truly taken flight.

On Sunday, Nov. 9, the Eastchester varsity cheerleading team clinched the New York State High School Sports Association Class B Game Day Championship, running the table at Hudson Valley Community College and winning the crown for the second straight year.

Squaring off against the other Class B sectional champions, the Eagles shined with a final-round score of 92—which was more than enough to separate them from the field as the only team to receive higher than 90 points on the afternoon.

Eagles coach Stephanie Leone said that even though nothing in competitions is ever guaranteed, she was confident in her charges’ abilities heading into the state competition, especially given the drive that the team has shown throughout the fall.

“The competition for Game Day at the state level can be very intense, and because we don’t compete against these teams during the season, we’re not quite sure what we are going to see,” said Leone. “So we just prepare the best we can, we have a very strong staff who works incredibly hard, and the girls just made a decision that they would be the winners, and they went out and did that.”

Leone also commended the Eastchester community for rallying behind the squad, thanking those that made the 2.5-hour drive up to HVCC for the competition, as well as the crowd that gathered at Eastchester High School on Sunday night to celebrate the returning state champs.

“So many fans went up for the day who weren’t even directly related to our athletes; they might have been on the JV, Modified or Rec teams, or they might have been neighbors or other members of the Eastchester community. They all drove up and came back to meet the girls,” said Leone. “We had 75-100 people here at the high school on Sunday night, after all the rain, to cheer the team on for becoming state champs.”

Now, with the fall season done, Eastchester will look to parlay this momentum into winter success, with the competition season officially kicking off next month.

“I think they’ve made a lot of decisions about where they want to be, and they’ve really put in the work in the off-season to make sure that they’re prepared, in terms of maintaining their tumbling and coming to open gyms,” said Leone. “Last winter, we fell a bit short in terms of some of our goals, so the girls made this determination that, regardless of the situation, they are prepared to compete for the section, hopefully win it, and then go back to states.”