T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Cheerleaders from the Barnesville, Martins Ferry and St. Clairsville high school cheerleading teams pose with Belmont County Board of Commissioners J.P Dutton, back row from left, Josh Meyer and Jerry Echemann.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Barnesville, Martins Ferry and St. Clairsville high school cheerleading teams were honored for their recent State Spirit Championship wins in Springfield, Ohio, at Wednesday’s Belmont County Board of Commissioners meeting.

The teams were honored individually, starting alphabetically with Barnesville High School being honored first.

“We’ve done more competition this year than we have ever done in the past. We won Best in the State Game Day Competition this year. We won the OHSAA State Competition in the Game Day and Traditional. They went to Nationals this year and won Game Day and runner-up for their traditional,” Barnesville head coach Abby McClelland said.

“Obviously all of these kids in this room are so talented. The Ohio Valley has been represented so well this year, and I’m proud of all of them,” she added.

Commission President Jerry Echemann asked McClelland her opinion on what makes a good cheerleading squad.

“There’s a lot that goes into it, definitely synchronization, the difficulty of skills that they can execute and how well they can execute them while keeping a smile on their face the entire time,” she replied.

The Barnesville High School Cheerleading Team has two seniors and one junior with the rest of the team being made up of freshmen and sophomores.

The Martins Ferry High School Cheerleading Team was the next to be honored.

“We were at the same competition as Barnesville and St. Clairsville that day.We were in three different divisions. Obviously we all represented Belmont County heavily that day,” Martins Ferry head coach Lana Jennette said. “We focus on team building and working with the community ,so when we focus on the game day format it’s not just all the dancing and the tumbling and all of that that you’d see in traditional. It’s school spirit, team spirit, crowd leading, jumps. It’s all of those things that you incorporate when you think of Friday night games, which is something that is a big tradition here in our valley.”

Traditional style incorporates dancing and tumbling on the larger mats, while Game Day style incorporates pom poms, megaphones, flags and signs.

The final team to be honored was the St. Clairsville High School Cheerleading Team.

Head coach Shawn Tomlan said she will be retiring at the end of this school year, so it’s an emotional time whenever the group gets together. She then spoke on how the state of Ohio does not recognize cheerleading as a sport, but three years ago the Ohio High School Athletic Association decided it would bring spirit into what it does.

“So they don’t recognize cheering as a sport, but they do recognize us as athletes,”

she said. “I think everyone in this room is a much better cheerleader because of West Virginia. When we compete at OVAC, they have pushed us because in West Virginia cheering is considered a sport.”

The St.Clairsville team has won the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference cheering competition for the past 16 years. It has won the competition in Springfield every year since its creation.

“This area is super strong in cheerleading, and that is how we have all of these athletes sitting here today,” Tomlan concluded.