With the motivation to improve their scores from their first meet, junior Josie Briant said the team focused on making sure they cleaned up their routines to come into the meet strong.

“Our meet (Dec. 7) motivated us to do better and get a higher score (in the future). We put a lot of sweat into the gym this week to show everybody what our team is like and how powerful we can be when we all come together,” Briant said.

Park defeated Richfield Dec. 9 with a final score of 124.125.

According to freshman Jordan Dolinar, the positive atmosphere contributed to the successful meet. 

“We all cheered each other on. That type of encouragement hypes everyone up and puts them in a good mindset,” Dolinar said. “We were all super excited, especially because it was the first home meet. We were all pumped up and weren’t as nervous.”

Coach Dawn Thielen said the team made great improvement compared to the last meet.

“Everything looked a lot cleaner, the routines were more polished and put together. Their attitude was there, skills were there, it was a great meet,” Thielen said. “We will clean up whatever was missed and (whatever is) messy and perfect it.”

According to Dolinar, the team was given critiques by the judges that will ultimately help them improve for future meets.

“We need to figure out what we need to improve on, we got some tips from the judges. We can take those and use them to help us get better,” Dolinar said.

Briant said the team needs to work on being more confident when walking into meets because a positive mindset will greatly contribute to their performance.

“(We need to work on) the attitude, nervousness and everyone being a little unprepared was not the best attitude to have. In the end we all come together and we are all happy,” Briant said. “Next time we will be more prepared (and) ready to compete and the nervousness will go away.”

The next meet will take place 6 p.m. Dec. 12 at Hopkins High School.