BW Competition Cheer Squad Crowned Division II State Champion

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

There’s noth­ing like get­ting bet­ter every year, and that’s what mem­bers of the Big Wal­nut High School Com­pe­ti­tion Cheer­lead­ing Team typ­i­cally do dur­ing the annual Ohio Asso­ci­a­tion of Sec­ondary School Admin­is­tra­tors 2012 Cheer and Dance State Cham­pi­onships; but if there is one thing that beats get­ting bet­ter each year it’s finally becom­ing the best.

On Sun­day, mem­bers of the high school com­pe­ti­tion cheer­lead­ing squad did just that when they became the 2013 OASSA Divi­sion 2 Non-Mount State Cham­pi­ons dur­ing the 2013 Cheer and Dance Cham­pi­onships held at St. John Arena on the cam­pus of The Ohio State University.

“There were 21 teams in our divi­sion who qual­i­fied at regional to com­pete today,” coach Sarah Kern-Kildow said late Sun­day evening. “Big Wal­nut has placed in the top 10 at the state com­pe­ti­tion every year that I have coached the team. Becom­ing state cham­pi­ons is the result of 13 years of chas­ing this dream.”

Dur­ing a Mon­day after­noon phone inter­view Kern-Kildow said the team’s entire sea­son was near flawless.

“We opened with a First Place at Pick­er­ing­ton Cheer For A Cure, then placed third at the Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Qual­i­fier for OASSA states, First Place at AmeriCheer Open Nation­als, and reclaimed our Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence league title,” Kern-Kildow said. “We earned a First Place and Grand Cham­pi­ons at the Arnold Clas­sic on Sat­ur­day, and then wrapped the sea­son up by becom­ing state cham­pi­ons on Sunday.”

Kern-Kildow said the inter­est­ing thing about the team’s only third place show­ing of the sea­son, Granville took first at the OASSA Qual­i­fier and Carlisle was sec­ond, was the Big Wal­nut squad beat Carlisle at the Arnold Clas­sic and defeated Granville by a firm 80 points at state.

“Those were the only two teams we lost to this year, and then we come back and beat both of them on the same week­end,” Kern-Kildow said.

“I have never been so proud of a group of girls and sup­port­ive par­ents,” Kern-Kildow con­tin­ued. “Our senior lead­er­ship set a great exam­ple for the younger girls, and all mem­bers of the team have worked self­lessly, some­times through ill­ness and injury, to get the job done. This is one of the hard­est work­ing, drama-free squads I’ve ever coached.”

Mem­bers of the Big Wal­nut High School Com­pe­ti­tion Cheer­lead­ing Team are seniors Jour­ney Ramey, Stephanie Keller, Court­ney King and Sela Garand; junior Alli­son Daugh­erty; sopho­mores Kennedy Walls and Stephanie Sut­ton; and fresh­men Saman­tha Bux­ton, Devin Rear­don, Syd­ney King, Kylie McKen­zie and Danielle Herman.

Kern-Kildow is assisted by coaches Stacey Hamil­ton and Savan­nah Brown.

The Ohio Asso­ci­a­tion of Sec­ondary School Admin­is­tra­tors (OASSA) is the umbrella orga­ni­za­tion for high school cheer­lead­ing com­pe­ti­tion in Ohio.

For addi­tional infor­ma­tion about OASSA cheer­lead­ing events and camps go to < oassa.org > and click on Cheerleading.

Posted by Gary Henery on Mar 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.