CENTER TWP — Competitive cheerleading is a team sport.

So when Butler seniors Taylor Stobert, Brooke Carr and Haley Stariat found themselves performing individual routines in front of hundreds of onlookers, they were out of their element.

The three were among senior cheerleaders who earned Universal Cheerleading Association All-American status last month by being selected by a panel of judges during an individual competition at a UCA camp in Greeley.

Their selection gives each a spot in the prestigious New Year’s Day parade in London, England.

“It’s exciting to get three girls through,” Butler assistant cheerleading coach Nichole Moore said. “We sent a girl last year — Jordan Mazzanti — and her picture is on the cover of this year’s brochure promoting that parade.”

Mazzanti is now a cheerleader at Penn State University.

The UCA camp featured 40 schools and 750 cheerleaders from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Virginia. Stobert, Carr and Stariat were among 40 selected All-Americans from more than 300 seniors who performed individually.

Each had to perform a cheering and dance routine, along with a jump.

“Every senior at the camp has the option to try for All-American, and we encourage all of ours to take their shot,” Butler assistant coach Sarah Preston said. “It’s definitely different, being out there alone, but it’s a chance to perform, and it’s great for their confidence.”

The individual cheer and dance routines were given to the cheerleaders on the first day of camp. The cheering segment lasted 30 seconds, the dance routine nearly two minutes. The competition took place on the third day of camp.

“I was pretty confident going into the competition because we had two days to practice,” Stobert said. “It was different being out there by myself, but I could hear the rest of the team cheering for me and that helped.”

The All-American cheerleaders must fund their own trips to London.

Stobert will be making the trip. Her mother, Erin Patterson Stobert, was an All-American cheerleader out of Butler in 1990 and participated in the London parade. Erin Stobert said she still has her uniform from the 1990 event.

“It’s cool that I’m going to get that same experience,” Taylor Stobert said.

Roughly 500 cheerleaders and dancers from across the United States will be performing in the London parade.

Stariat, who will accompany Stobert and her mother to London, described the UCA individual competition as “nerve wracking.”

“Being up there with everybody staring at me ... I’m just not used to that,” Stariat said. “But we had practiced a lot and had the routine down. We practiced during lunch and during breaks from our team practices.

“I can’t wait to go. It’s exciting,” Stariat said.

Carr does not know whether she’s making the trip yet but hopes it happens.

“It would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she said.

Carr admitted to being nervous and “feeling tight out there.” But when her name was called as an All-American?

“Total shock. I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

Butler head cheerleading coach Nicole Nea, in her sixth year, said this is the first time the Golden Tornado have qualified three girls for the London trip.

“They all deserve it, and it’s another feather in the cap for the program,” Nea said.

Besides Mazzanti, four other former Butler cheerleaders are now in college programs: Jordan Hinkle is at Penn State, Sasha Harvey and Elena Bollinger at Duquesne and Alexis Frenchak at Indiana (Pa.) University.

As a team, Butler took home second place in the cheer and x-treme routines at the UCA camp. Other participating team members were Ashley Burk, Olivia Young, Saige Rearick, Amber Burk, Kaylee Atkinson, Nina Hindman, Taylor Fisher, Paige Williams, Kayla Lenhart, Jensen Wehrli, Anne Codispot, Jillian Tilko, Alex Slomers, Lyrik Frisby, Emily Huber, Nikki Slomers and Kayla Donaldson.