The Danbury High School cheerleading team lost five seniors — who had made up most of their varsity team — when they graduated last year.

Despite this hurdle, they worked hard this year, gained momentum and placed third earlier this month  in the FCIAC competition.

Head coach Joann Tatarzycki,  the 2015 FCIAC Cheerleading Coach of the Year, revealed that the win was not a surprise, considering the few upperclassmen on the squad.

“Our thought going forward was that it was going to be a rebuilding year,” she said. “Basically, our team this year is last year’s JV team. However, the progress that they’ve made is incredible.”

There are only two seniors on the team this year: head captain Danielle Herman and co-captain Marissa Nevarez.

“Usually, we have a lot of seniors to keep us in line and we have a lot of underclassmen this year that were new to FCIACs and competing, so it was a different experience,” Herman said.

Preparing for FCIACs proved to be a challenge, however the team stepped up its game and put all its focus into making the performance flawless.

“It’s always nice to be top three. We had a perfect performance,” Tatarzycki said. “Of course, we would have loved first place, but it’s nice to finish in the top three.”

The team was proud but a bit disappointed in the result of FCIACs.

“I felt like we practiced so hard and our performance was really well done, so we were a little upset that we got third,” Nevarez said.

Sophomore co-captain Sydnei Brimage discussed the effort the girls had to put in to make it to the top of the leaderboard.

“I think we took FCIACs more seriously because we had a big competition the week before that really prepared us,” she said.

Although many varsity seniors leave the team each season, this year was different.

“This year, we only had four or five returning varsity team members so we really had to take a lot of the JV girls. Some of them didn’t quite have the skills we were looking for at first, but have achieved them as the season has gone on,” Tatarzycki explained.

This rebuilding year has been a success for the team, with them receiving top scores in all of their competitions thus far, and it shows a lot of motivation to continue to prevail throughout the rest of the season.

Their state competition will be March 5 in New Haven.

This year’s squad:

Freshman

Jordan Czap

Maddy Leonard

Sophomores

Sydnei Brimage

Kelsey Bustelo

Aryanna DaSilva

Rachael Hulse

Genesis Rodriguez

Michaela West

Juniors

Cayla Balzarini

Melissa Carvalheiro

Rebecca Dibble

Brittany Falkowski

Lexi Lucas

Felicia Miller

Shannon Miranda

Nichole Mora

Seniors

Danielle Herman

Marisa Nevarez

Sophomore Co-Captain Sydnei Brimage, Head Captain Danielle Herman and Senior Co-Captain Marisa Nevarez pose for a picture during their practice.