Photo Provided The Martins Ferry Purple Riders, pictured with the Div. 6 OHSAA Spirit State Championship, as well as the Best Crowd Leading, Best Fight Song and Best Band Chant awards, after Dec. 10’s championship competition.

WHEELING — The Barnesville Shamrocks and Martins Ferry Purple Riders have new hardware in their trophy case as of Dec. 10, with both teams taking home Spirit State Championship in their respective divisions.

The Barnesville Shamrocks’ cheer squad took home the gold from the Division V championship, continuing a spotless competition season against a five-team field.

“We beat out the second-place team, Northeastern, by over 3.5 points,” Barnesville head coach Abby McClelland said. “In that preliminary round we did get awarded Best Crowd Leading and Best Fight Song in the qualifying round.

“In the qualifying round they are really looking for how well you’re engaging with the crowd, you have to do a fan chant dance, and you have to do a cheer to lead the crowd and then you do your fight song. Two out of the three categories we did get the highest score.”

Come the finals, the ‘Rocks stepped up to the occasion, finishing with a combined score of 92.33 while Northeastern finished at 88.63.

“I thought that they had a lot of energy,” McClelland said. “That’s one of the biggest things that people look for, really just having authentic energy, being able to make the crowd want to cheer along with you, clap along with you, really engage with that crowd. I thought they really nailed that. This is only our second year doing the Game Day-type competition, and we got first place in all of our competitions in this Game Day division so far, so I’m really proud of what we’re doing only in our second year.”

The OHSAA Spirit State Championships is still a new competition, just a few years old, but even with it’s limited time in existence, Barnesville had a history with the event, having been stopped at the preliminaries last year.

“We didn’t even make it into the championship round last year, so that was our goal coming into this year’s championship,” McClelland said. “And not only did they get into the final round but they won, so I’m really proud of them.”

Martins Ferry likewise seized the crown in Division VI, sweeping the preliminary superlatives with best fight song, best band chant, and best crowd leading before beating out three other advancing teams in the finals.

“Obviously we were ecstatic,” Martins Ferry head coach Lana Jennette said. “With all the hard work they put in– we’d been working on technique and routines and trying to build a strong foundation for competition season– for them to show how hard they’d worked and for them to have that moment was just thrilling as a coach watching them.”

Martins Ferry’s 86.3 combined score topped No. 2 Dayton Christian with an 85.07.

The Purple Riders’ championship triumph also came in their first trip to the competition, a meteoric rise for the Ferry squad.

“This was our first time going to compete in this competition,” Jennette said. “For our first time going down there being our first time coming back with the trophy, it was awesome.”