By Rianna Garza, staff writer
At Indian Trail High School & Academy, cheerleaders start winning young, and continue to win big and often.
First, there is the junior varsity squad. On Jan. 24, the JV cheer proved to be the best in state by winning the Junior Varsity JAM state championship. The competition was held at Sheboygan South High School with 11 other teams competing in their division.
Since 2010, the Indian Trail JV cheer has worked hard to create and continue a legacy that they are proud to uphold.
This year, with IT taking home their fifth state champion title, JV Cheerleaders Jazlyn Kiehl and Leila Santana admit to feeling the pressure to maintain the impressive streak the teams before them created.
“I feel like if we didn’t win, people would have looked down on us,” Santana said.
“I did not want to be known as the team that didn’t win,” Kiehl said.
While the pressure and nerves were high all around, Kiehl and Santana said that they were most nervous for hitting their stunts since the week before state they weren’t sticking a lot of them and even had a stunt group who got an all new stunting routine just a few days prior to state.
With 19 people on the team, getting everyone on the same page and in the same mindset may have been the hardest part of preparing for the competition.
Fortunately, all the work paid off, said Santana.
“The second our routine ended while we were at state, everyone just started crying and it was just a beautiful moment,” Kiehl recalled.
While winning may make the streak harder to maintain for the teams to come, being able to say that our JV cheer team has won state five years in a row establishes a winning tradition at Indian Trail, of which many are proud.
Combine that with Indian Trail’s Varsity cheerleaders taking home their third straight state championship title on Feb. 28 and Indian Trail’s cheer teams are making a name for themselves as the ones to beat.
“Other teams will be fighting harder to beat us next year. I think we’ve been the team to beat since we won state the first time, so the competition is tough every year,” said Ashlyn Bealer, a Varsity cheerleader.
So what sets IT cheer apart from other cheer teams?
“Our ability to come together at the end and pull through, and how we fight to keep our streak going,” she said.
“It feels amazing to end my last cheer season the same way I have every year and I’m glad that we were able to keep our streak going. There is no better feeling than hearing your name called for first place at state and the picture can prove that,” Bealer said after personally competing and winning state four times.
Varsity Cheer Coach Jackie Yunker also has a theory.
“The reason we are successful is all from rigorous, focused practices,” she said. “Every athlete also knows to respect each other as teammates. They give each other constructive criticism and they get better by talking and listening to each other’s advice.”
Yunker added that the bond between the girls is unlike any other team she has seen before.
“They get along so well and that’s what really makes them able to pull it together as a team and come out on top. As a first year coach, I am so honored to have been able to work with such a wonderful group of talented girls!” Yunker said.
Julie Kerkman, cheer program coordinator, also attributed their success to understanding the score sheet.
“We know how to add difficulty to max out the points we need in the areas we need them. If we know that in one area we won’t be able to max out points, we make sure we do that in another area,” Kerkman said. “Our key focus areas are usually stunt difficulty and choreography.”
Kerkman also praised the group of Indian Trail girls that are part of a winning tradition of excellence with high expectations.
“Many come to us from Mahone, a school with a winning program like ours,” she said.
While winning state five times in a row for junior varsity and three times in a row for varsity are impressive records on their own, Indian Trail Cheer hopes to continue the legacy in years to come.