Scott Swanson
Karly Newport was getting ready to perform at the Oregon Elite Classics cheer competition in Salem late last month when she noticed something strange.
“I was on deck, the next to compete,” said Newport, a junior at Sweet Home High School. “I competed against several other girls on Individual Day. When I get nervous, I don’t usually watch the girls.”
She said she’d heard about one particular competitor, Jessie Hammond, an eighth-grader from the Sandy area, who was known for her tumbling skill.
“She was before me. I heard her music stop and I saw a lot of people watching her.”
In the middle of her cheer routine, which includes a heavy gymnastics component, the Sandy competitor landed wrong and, Newport said, tore her ACL.
“Her coach had to carry her off,” said Newport, who then performed her own routine – and won.
“I wasn’t really expecting anything out of it,” she said. “I knew I wasn’t going to beat her if she was going to continue.”
Newport’s coach, Ginger Plebuch of the Vertex Athletics gym in Lebanon, said the Sandy athlete “had already thrown some good tumbling. It wasn’t scored, so we don’t know for sure (how Hammond would have finished).”
Holding a medal that she knew would have gone to Hammond, Newport decided the right thing to do would be to give it to the other girl.
Later in the competition, during the team event, the Sandy athlete returned from the hospital, on crutches, to support her own team. Newport handed her the medal.
“She could have beaten Karli,” Plebuch said. “Her skill level was very good.
“Honestly, just knowing Karly, I think Karli just felt really bad.”
Newport has participated in cheer since the first grade and also has competed in both volleyball and track, but after missing cheer as a high school freshman and sophomore due to recovery from surgery, she was invited to visit Vertex’s free day last summer.
“I’ve tried a lot of sports, but none of them really interests me as much,” she said. “I like gymnastics because I can see what I improve on. Track, you see the times, volleyball you can see that you’re hitting harder, but in gymnastics, I can go from a layout to half . I can see myself develop those skills.”
Others saw it too and, Newport said, she was invited to continue at the gym. Though she has never participated in cheer for Sweet Home High School, she’s enjoyed cheer, particularly the tumbling aspect.
“She is good at it,” said Plebuch, whose own daughter Peyton just finished her senior year of cheer at Sweet Home and is an assistant at the gym.
“Karly has won first in almost every competition we’ve entered her in. She’s done really well.”
Newport said the week after her experience, she got called into Athletic Director Steve Brown’s office at the high school and showed up, wondering if she was in some sort of trouble, she said.
She wasn’t.
“I’m proud that even though she wasn’t representing Sweet Home, she still was representing Sweet Home,” Brown said. “The fact that she did that, whether she had SH emblem on her uniform or not, she still represented Sweet Home well.”