By Jessica May

ORLANDO, Fla. -- When a bunch of high school girls get clustered into the same room, one would hardly think that serious vibes would be floating throughout the air.

High school girls tend to be known for their ditsy attitudes, obnoxious behavior and tendencies leaning toward boy-craziness. However, as I walked into the Indiana Jones Theater at Disney World Saturday, giggly, flighty girls were not to be found. Thousands of teenage cheerleaders had moved into Disney -- home of the annual National High School Cheerleading Competition. Intensity flowed throughout the amphitheater, as participants and spectators alike twitched nervously while each routine was performed.

For many, the idea of cheerleaders competing is a foreign one. Let me break it down for you.

Each team spends anywhere from 10 to 20 hours a week practicing and perfecting their tumbling, stunting and dancing skills. They slave away to achieve team unity and perfect synchronization, which is necessary for success in such visual performances. Then, if they are ready, the team attends a local competition put on by the Universal Cheerleaders Association, hoping to score enough points in their routine to get a bid to go to nationals. If they score high enough, the team is allowed to advance, creating a bigger amount of pressure for each girl on the team.

More hours are devoted to practice and perfection of a three-minute routine.

They come from their small towns and comfortable surroundings, from their school stands full of admiring supporters and their friends and family, to an amusement park filled with 350 other high school cheerleading teams -- about 5,500 girls. They take the stage, filled with anxiety and unsettled nerves, hoping to just "stick" every stunt and nail every tumbling pass. When the music starts, they have three minutes to show everyone what they’ve got. Three short minutes to speak for the hundreds of hours spent in practice.

While many people might not even know that a national cheerleading competition takes place every year, many more might not know that high school girls in schools near by attend it. Just about an hour away from Logan, Layton's Northridge High School and Kaysville's Davis High School represent Utah is a great way.

Walking out of the "Large Varsity" division, consisting of 56 competing teams, Northridge placed fourth in the semi-finals. Competing in the "Medium Varsity" division, Davis came out in sixth place overall. These are high honors, considering that they are up against schools from California, Kentucky and Tennessee that take cheerleading very seriously from about age 2. These schools are well known for their skills and have highly impressive track records. The UCA national competition has been running for 14 years.

Out of those 14, Houston High School, from Germantown, Tenn., has taken 15 first-place trophies in several divisions. In contrast, emerging schools, such as Northridge and Davis have to fight to keep up. They have participants who have only been cheering for one or two years.

Brooke Jackson, a junior at Northridge High School, has been in the program for three years, and while you would think competing would become easier every year, she says otherwise.

"I think it has gotten harder because every year other squads learn new and harder things. We have to come out and be better and work harder," says Jackson.

She, like many others from Utah, is playing catch-up to those other girls who practically started cheerleading from the time they were conceived. Coming out of the semi-finals in fourth place is quite an achievement.

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