While the Sweet Home High School Husky cheerleader competition team has only three girls with more than two years of competition experience, the cheerleaders are planning to take things to a higher level this year, possibly risking a reputation for clean performances.
The cheerleaders will begin their winter schedule Saturday at Clackamas High School.
“It is kind of young,” Coach Crystal Kimball said of her team. “We only had three seniors last year, and we’re still a fairly new team.”
The Huskies have been competing for three years, finishing third at state their first year and first the past two years, tying for first last year.
That push for even bigger and tougher performances won’t stop this year either, Kimball said. The grade-school girls she started working with three years ago will come onto the high school team next year and push the team’s abilities even higher.
Having been in the youth and junior high programs, Kimball won’t “have to start from square one,” she said. Cheerleading is so technical, it takes a lot of time to teach them.
And this year, she expects a bigger and better performance too, she said. Sweet Home has a reputation for clean performances, but adding in new features, such as the basket toss, one-legged stunts, more gymnastics, twisting out of stunts and moving pyramids, is much more difficult work than the team has done in the past three years. That means the cleanliness of their performance is at risk.
She usually plays it safe for the sake of a clean show, Kimball said. Stepping up the performance means she’ll have to keep a close eye on how clean the performance is.
She is optimistic about her team, she said. They work hard and get along well.
“This is actually the calmest year,” she said. Like she read about the dance team, this group of girls “all get along very well.”
It can be challenging to bring 20 people with different personalities, gifts and talents together, she said.
They’re strong academic performers as well, she said. She is excited to see where the Huskies place in the OSAA academic rankings.
Usually, she said, she has four or five that “like to make me nervous.”
Kimball is reluctant to talk about taking a third first-place trophy, she said. She doesn’t want to shoot the team in the foot at this point, but “there’s a lot of pressure when you’ve done well” to do it again.
“We’re just going to work hard and do what we always do,” she said. “We’ll pray the outcome is for the best” and the cheerleaders can “see the fruits of their labors.”
They will perform to an “Elvis” theme this year, Kimball said. All of the cheerleaders will have 1950s hair, makeup and scarves.
The music will be Elvis mixes, with voiceovers by KRKT DJ Scott Schuler, who does Elvis impersonations.
“I really love Elvis,” Kimball said. “I thought it would be really original. I’ve never seen anyone do that.”
The team has had a theme the past three years, she said, and she was thinking about going with no theme this year. But people have come to expect it, and she’s had a number of phone calls asking what theme the team will use this year.
The OSAA will combine the 4A small and large divisions this year, she said. Fewer schools are able to field large teams, leaving just Sweet Home, Philomath and Brookings Harbor with large squads.
That will make things rougher on the small schools, she said. The small teams don’t do as much tumbling, for example; and the larger teams tend to create a bigger impression, scoring higher.
Looking at past scoring, the large teams score above the small teams although they didn’t compete directly with each other.
The team includes third-year competition cheerleaders juniors Abbie Rice and Leah Keesecker and senior Larisa Cole.
Second-year competition cheerleaders include seniors Lea Rasmussen, McKenna Burnett, Tanesia McDowell, Ella Butler and Conna Erickson; juniors Jessica Smith, Emily Coonrod and Leah Dauley; and sophomore Haley Voldbaeck.
First-year competition cheerleaders include senior Ava Deshaw; juniors Stephanie Szuch and Jessica Fagan; sophomore Courtnee King; and freshmen Kellie Pollock, Jocelyn Plebuch, Laura Denton and Desiree McCormick.
Kendra Waley, who can perform in a variety of positions, is an alternate.
Captains are Cole, Burnett and McDowell.
On Jan. 17, the team will compete at Springfield; on Jan. 24 at West Albany; Jan. 31 at Jesuit; and Feb. 7 at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in the pre-state Oregon Elite Championships.
State will be held on Feb. 14 in the Memorial Coliseum in Portland. With the combination of the 4A divisions, Kimball expects to face 15 to 20 teams.