Two Hungarian dancers to compete at the world’s biggest cheerleading competition

Hanna Szabó and Patrícia Balogh will represent Hungary at the World Cheerleading Championship in Orlando, Florida, on April 26-28, szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu writes.

The Hungarian duo will perform in front of a live audience of 5,000, and millions watching at home on the channel ESPN. Hanna Szabó and Patrícia Balogh are participating in the most prestigious cheerleading competition for the second time, and they have a great chance of reaching the finals in freestyle double dance category.

In 2016, the duo of the ELTE Cheer Team made sport history when they became the first Hungarian team to compete at the prestigious international competition, where they finished at the 15^th place.

The team has been training for the competition for over a year. The trainer of the duo is the vice-president of the Hungarian Cheer Federation, Rita Kovácsik. “I’m proud that university athletes will represent our country at the most prestigious competition of the year. Performing in the USA is an incredible experience in itself, which makes the year-long training and the sacrifices at the university all worth it,” she says.

Patrícia Balogh, who is studying food science at the Szent István University, says it’s not easy to manage all their obligations. “We go to university, we train 5-6 times a week, and we also work as trainers. Time management is difficult, and our private life suffers it the most, but cheerleading is our life.”

Hanna Szabó, who is majoring in Italian at Eötvös Loránd University, states that these competitions are the best opportunities to promote the sport in Hungary. “As children, we dreamed about wearing our national colours, but we never did any sports that would have made it possible, so we gave up. The fact that we eventually succeeded, makes us incredibly proud and we’ll do everything to make the people of Hungary proud as well.”

The ICU World Cheerleading Championships will be held at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. 12,500 dancers from 70 countries will compete at the event.

The International Cheer Union has 106 member nations and over 4.5 million athletes worldwide. At the end of last year, cheerleading was given provisional Olympic status, which raises the possibility of the sport being included at the Olympics.