Detroit PAL football, cheer, dance teams bring home national titles

Three Detroit PAL teams — in cheer, hip hop dance and football — brought home national championship honors this month and made history for their organizations.

Detroit PAL sent a total of six teams to the American Youth Football and Cheer National Championships in Kissimmee and Naples, Florida. The top honors went to the Eastside Cowboys cheer team, ages 8 and under; the Motorcity Jaguars hip-hop dance team, ages 12 and under; and the Michigan Youth Football League’s All-Star team, ages 10 and under.

“That is a pretty cool thought to think that PAL teams have excelled at the highest level of little league sports,” said David Greenwood, director of community engagement and facilities at Detroit PAL, which is entering its 55th year. “It’s really exciting just all the way around, but the cherry on top is those organizations coming back with titles.”

The tournament concluded with honoring longtime cheerleading coach and Detroit PAL Associate Director of Cheer Glenda Stancil, known better to her cheerleaders as Coach Pott.

The youth football all-star team, which consists of players and coaches from teams across metro Detroit, brought home PAL’s first championship in the sport, said Darrell Montgomery, Detroit PAL’s football commissioner. Montgomery said the team was focused heading into the tournament.

“Basically, we had to show ‘em that we can come down there and do it; and we did it,” Montgomery said.

Terrence Stubbs, 11, a sixth grader at Bethune Elementary who started playing football at the age of four, won the team’s MVP award.

“He came out. He worked hard,” Montgomery said. “He did his job as the captain, made sure kids stayed up and played to they hardest and to the fullest and he just got out there and did his job. I mean he really put in work.”

In cheer, the American Youth Cheer tournament marked the first time the Eastside Cowboys traveled to a national championship. All three of the Eastside Cowboy teams — 8 and under, 10 and under and 14 and under, qualified for the final day of the tournament known as Super Sunday and placed among the top five teams in each of their divisions.

“I was satisfied with just making it down there and then when we made it to Super Sunday, oh yeah, we were winners already,” said Julon Reese, cheer director for the Eastside Cowboys.

In hip-hop dance, the Motorcity Jaguars, a five-year old program that became a part of PAL in 2020, won its first championship. Mercedes Ruffin, the team’s president, said she knows that parents are looking to put their kids into more established programs, but she’s grateful for everyone who committed to the Jaguars.

“Between losing coaches, and losing kids and making adjustments, it was definitely a struggle,” Ruffin said. “But it makes me happy that all our hard work paid off.”

The weekend came to a close with honors for Stancil, who was inducted into the American Youth Football and American Youth Cheer Hall of Fame.

But the award wasn’t Stancil’s focus that day.

“I just didn’t even think about me. It was so much more about these girls getting to Sunday, their excitement, moving them around, to watch them practice outside, then to get inside …,” Stancil said, speaking to the busy schedule of the nine hour day.

“It wasn’t about me. I don’t make it about me and people say, ‘You need to really put yourself up because you deserve it.’ They say that, and I don’t,” she said chuckling.

It wasn’t until Stancil got back to Detroit and saw comments on social media about her hall of fame induction that her achievement finally sunk in.

“To see cheerleaders I coached 20 years ago that were in the comments, you know, like, wow, OK, maybe I did do good for myself,” Stancil said. “I earned this.”

Although Stancil is a hall of famer, the 58 year-old says her career of over 40 years is far from finished as cheer continues to grow.

“I don’t see it coming no time soon. I’m in it because I truly love this thing, and it’s really developing,” Stancil said. “I’m so geeked that we’re stunting and it is so much to do, you know get our kids to where they need to be like other states. ... We’re just getting started, well, my fight is anyway.”

Eric Guzmán covers youth sports culture at the Free Press as a corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support this work at bit.ly/freepRFA. Email Eric at eguzman@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit PAL football, cheer, dance teams bring home national titles