Drop-off in participation leads to loss of competition cheer team at Oconee County High School

By Sydney Kohne

In the United States, 260 schools and nearly 5,000 cheerleaders are involved with their high school’s competitive cheer team. For the first time in over 20 years, Oconee County High School was counted out of the nationwide statistics as it was forced to drop its competition cheer squad from its athletic program in the fall of 2019. 

Instead, OCHS offered only sideline cheer for football and basketball for the students who still wanted to be involved in the sport. The removal of OCHS’s competitive cheer team ultimately came from lack participation from student athletes, for reasons ranging from outside interests to injuries suffered in the sport. 

OCHS offers four other sports in the fall, three of which are offered to girls. Sometimes one sport has to take the fall so the others can succeed, said Penny Pitts Mitchell, the Georgia High School Association associate director for cheer. 

“With all the sports in the fall…sometimes there’s just too many things going on, you don’t have enough kids,” she said. 

At least eight cheerleaders are required to make a competitive cheer team, per GHSA regulations. Anna Higgins, a senior cheerleader at OCHS, knew that there wasn’t enough to fill 18 spots, which is considered a good number that includes room for alternates in competitions. 

“We honestly just didn’t have strong enough numbers to pull together a team this year,” she said. “At this point we don’t have that many girls interested in competing at the high school level.”

But the decrease in interest to competitively cheer for the school came years before the 2019 season. It manifested first in 2016, when team members fought multiple injuries and only one decided to return for the following year. OCHS brought up multiple eighth graders for the next season to make a large enough team. 

Mary-Cain Rue was a freshman when she joined the school’s competition team. It ended up being one of her most stressful transitions into life in high school. 

“Many of my teammates, including myself, sustained one or more injuries over the season and our coaches were very hard on us,” she said. “I remember feeling almost grateful that our season was done…it felt like so much stress and anxiety had been lifted off my shoulders.” 

Rue is now a senior and continues to cheer for the school and has been named a captain in sideline. But she still remembers the trials that the competition team went through three years prior. 

Even though Rue suffered from a stress fracture in her foot, she remained an alternate for her injured teammates all season, taking the floor in every competition. 

Injuries, especially concussions, are not uncommon in high school cheerleading. From the academic years of 2013-2014 to 2017-2018, 440 concussions were reported in a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics. All cheer-related injuries can be caused by a multitude of factors: lack of training and experience to be attempting certain stunts, the floors cheerleaders are competing on and even pressure from different coaches to do more intense tumbling. 

Within the last four years at OCHS, former competition cheer head coach and current sideline coach Alyssa Maxey has seen “seven or eight” concussions amongst approximately 20 girls. She claims that some of these injuries result from the differences in high school cheer and All-Star cheer, commonly understood as the “club” or “travel” version of cheerleading. Such differences include the level of skill required and surfaces competed on in each. 

“The school [cheer] is on a flat floor, so there’s different skills you can do,” said Southern Britt, a cheerleader at the University of Georgia. “On a flat floor there’s [a] higher risk for injury. All-Star has spring floor due to costly reasons most high schools don’t have [spring floors].”

All-Star cheer is the most competitive and intense form of the sport for youth. In addition to providing the safer floors for tumbling, All-Star gives cheerleaders more experience to improve their skill sets, ultimately helping many of them move onto cheering in college. 

OCHS senior Emelia Muilenberg has cheered for three different teams in her community: the school’s sideline and competitive team, as well as Oconee County Elite, the All-Star team located in Watkinsville. The level of competition is plainly higher in All-Star, she says, and the teams have different goals in mind while they’re competing. 

“All-Star cheer is a lot more competitive from what I’ve experienced,” said Muilenberg. “Most people in All-Stars have a very common goal, for example to go to [the World Championships]. Some people in high school cheer just would like to win state, then their season is over.”

Another common goal for many cheerleaders is to cheer in college. But without the opportunity to cheer at a competitive level in high school or All-Star, that dream might not become a reality. 

“I don’t know anyone in college cheer that only did sideline,” said Britt. “There are girls who were on a stellar All-Star team that didn’t make a college sideline team…if you weren’t on a state champ high school competition team or a stellar All-Star team…you probably aren’t going to get on a [college] team.” 

Maxey and junior varsity sideline coach, Katie Gentry, have seen the migration of cheerleaders from high school competition to All-Stars, citing it as a contributing reason for the loss of OCHS’s competition team. According to Maxey and Gentry, some gyms discourage their cheerleaders from cheering for their high school entirely.

“They’ve got practice three nights a week, and their time and their parents’ financial obligations, so there’s a lot in that,” said Gentry. “That means they’re practicing in the morning, in the afternoon, they’re trying to do their studies, they’re trying to get to All-Stars, it’s [a lot].”

In the coming years, OCHS hopes to revive their competition cheer team and overcome the obstacles of injuries and cheerleader movement to All-Star gyms. But with a promising finale to the football season within reach as the Warriors move onto the state championship, the spirit on the sideline will be more than enough excitement for OCHS’s cheerleaders. As the squad danced around together before the semifinal game, their ability to invigorate a crowd was evident. 

“Look at those girls, they’re having so much fun,” said Maxey, watching the girls get pumped up minutes before they took to the field. “This is what they do.”