BW recognizes State Champion Competition Cheer Squad

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Word has got­ten around by now that mem­bers of the Big Wal­nut High School Com­pe­ti­tion Cheer­lead­ing Team took home first place at the Sun­day, March 3, Ohio Asso­ci­a­tion of Sec­ondary School Admin­is­tra­tors 2013 Cheer and Dance State Cham­pi­onships; but many folks don’t under­stand exactly how rare win­ning state in any dis­ci­pline is.

Last Fri­day after­noon, dur­ing a cer­e­mony in the high school gym­na­sium, Big Wal­nut High School Ath­letic Direc­tor Steve Gle­senkamp explained just how rare state cham­pi­onships are.

“Big Wal­nut has been around for 60 years, and this is only the third state cham­pi­onship,” Gle­senkamp said, direct­ing stu­dents atten­tion to a wall at the end of the gym­na­sium with ban­ners rec­og­niz­ing a 2002 Golf State Cham­pi­onship and a 2007 Var­sity Foot­ball Sate crown. “That shows you just how hard some­thing like this is to accomplish.”

Big Wal­nut High School Cheer­lead­ing Coach Sarah Kern-Kildow said dur­ing state com­pe­ti­tion mem­bers of the team had only 2 min­utes and 30 sec­onds on the floor, while judges were look­ing for perfection.

“These girls have been sac­ri­fic­ing their Mon­days, every Thurs­day for prac­tice, and Sat­ur­day morn­ings from Sep­tem­ber through March,” Kern-Kildow said. “When you add in cheer­ing at foot­ball and bas­ket­ball games, this cham­pi­onship is the result of com­mit­ment and a lot of hard work.”

Kern-Kildow said the squad’s only loss of the sea­son was a third place fin­ish at the OASSA Qual­i­fier at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity, one of the largest meets in the state with 19 teams par­tic­i­pat­ing. Granville took first at the OASSA Qual­i­fier, Carlisle was sec­ond, but the story doesn’t end there, she added. The Big Wal­nut squad beat Carlisle at the Arnold Clas­sic, and beat Granville by a firm 80 points at state.

Just as sweet, Kern-Kildow said, was bring­ing the Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion crown back home to Big Walnut.

“We won the OCC in 2001, 2003, 2007, 2008 and 2010, and this year we got the cham­pi­onship back,” Kern-Kildow said. “Bradley went out of our divi­sion but we beat Bradley. This is an amaz­ing group of girls — fresh­men, sopho­mores, juniors and seniors — and they brought home the hardware.”

Gle­senkamp recapped the squad’s sea­son lead­ing up to the state championship.

“The com­pe­ti­tion trail started Jan­u­ary 26 at Pick­er­ing­ton Cen­tral with a first place; the next day, the 27th, the squad fin­ished third at OSU, the only time dur­ing the year the squad was not cham­pi­ons,” Gle­senkamp said. “On Feb­ru­ary 2 we hosted a regional com­pe­ti­tion here at Big Wal­nut and qual­i­fied for state com­pe­ti­tion. On Feb­ru­ary 9 the team won the AmeriCheer Open Nation­als at the Colum­bus Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, and on Feb­ru­ary 17 the squad won the Cap­i­tal Divi­sion OCC Cham­pi­onship at Dublin Jerome.

“On March 2 the team won First Place at the Arnold Clas­sic and was crowned Arnold Clas­sic Grand Cham­pi­ons of the Com­pe­ti­tion,” Gle­senkamp con­tin­ued. “And on March 3 the com­pe­ti­tion cheer team made Big Wal­nut his­tory by win­ning its first ever State Cham­pi­onship. Their pic­ture will now join our other cham­pi­ons on the Big Wal­nut Wall of Fame.”

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 13 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.