On the scorecard, undefeated Sweet Home finished first in the OSAA 4A state cheerleading championships Saturday at the Memorial Coliseum.
But a technical difficulty with the music led to a 10-point penalty and a fourth-place trophy for the Huskies.
Their friendly rivals at Klamath Union High School finished first with a score of 55.32, and North Marion High School, coached by Ashley (Wall) Murray, a Sweet Home High School graduate, was second by less than a point, 54.77.
Gladstone finished third with 52.27 points, and after the penalty, the Huskies had 48.88 points. Without the penalty, the Huskies would have been first with 58.88 points.
“Our music stalled in the middle,” said Coach Amber Rosa. “It stalled for a few seconds.”
The competition has a time limit of 2 minutes, 30 seconds per routine, Rosa said. Sweet Home’s routine requires 2:28. When the button was pushed on the iPod, the music didn’t play right away, and the Huskies ended up eight seconds over the time limit. For the first six seconds over, the penalty is five points. Above that, the penalty is 10 points.
“It’s really disappointing,” Rosa said. The rule “is not designed for technical problems.”
It’s meant to prevent teams from performing routines longer than 2:30, she said. Klamath Union representatives asked the judges if they could give the trophy to the Huskies anyway, but the judges told them they could only forfeit the trophy, which would then go to North Marion.
Rosa said the judges read the rule and watched video carefully looking for a way to avoid giving the penalty, but they couldn’t find a way out of it.
The team had already fought through adversity on Thursday when Mikayla Crompton went to the hospital with advanced pneumonia and pleural effusion. Rosa said she remained at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital on Monday but was getting better.
The Eugene Register-Guard published a story Tuesday morning, Feb. 17, quoting Crompton’s father, Eugene police Sgt. Larry Crompton, as saying that was doing much better after receiving a phone call from country music star Neal McCoy, whom the family knows through a restaurant they used to own.
Rosa said Mikayla Crompton was a strong senior who was involved in everything throughout the routine.
“We changed our whole routine on Friday.”
Stepping in was alternate Franzi Wollny, a senior exchange student from Germany.
“The kids really pulled it out,” Rosa said. Scoring is based on the number of times certain stunts are performed in a routine. As part of the routine, the team had to complete eight back tucks. Those were handled by Crompton, Natalie Thorpe and Britney Zook. Each did three throughout the routine.
Thorpe and Zook stepped up to “throw” an extra back tuck each, Rosa said. The standing flip, without using hands, is exhausting, but not adding them would have reduced their points and made a difference.
Alex Olin and Thorpe added a flipping pass, a running stunt where they must perform a flip without using their hands.
“They literally executed as well as they possibly could have,” Rosa said.
The team was marked down a half-point for one tumbling fault, she said. Those happen all the time at competitions, although she likes her team to have no faults at all.
Realizing, based on their performance, they won on points helps blunt the disappointment a little, Rosa said, but it’s also the source of the disappointment.
Still this team has handled it probably better than any other team might have, she said. “Everybody in the room knew they had the highest score.”
Beyond the championship title, the Huskies had a good day.
Later in the session, the Huskies won the Creative Choreography award.
Alex Olin won a $1,000 academic scholarship from the Oregon Cheerleading Coaches Association.
At All-State earlier in the season, four cheerleaders competed individually, with Zook finishing third. Also competing were Erin Bauer, Crompton and Thorpe.
One of the team’s stunting groups placed first at the all-stars. Group members included Dakota Garcia, Thorpe, Ashley Bailey, Shania Baxter and Ilima Walker.
At the junior level, Sweet Home Junior Cheer finished second behind Aloha by just 1.28 points, Rosa said. When the team saw Aloha two weeks earlier at Clackamas High School, Aloha finished 10 points ahead of the Huskies.
Competing at state were seniors Natalie Thorpe, Sabria Branton, McKenzie Curtis, Sammy McMahand, Caitlyn Spencer, Adriana Perez, Alex Olin and Franzi Wollny. Senior Sadie Riggs also was a part of the competition team although she did not compete. The team also included junior Dakota Garcia; sophomores Ilima Walker, Erin Bauer, Ivy Weidner and Shania Baxter; and freshmen Britney Zook and Ashley Bailey. Hannah Graham, a freshman, was an alternate.