Photo Provided The St. Clairsville cheer team, pictured on Dec. 10 at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio for the OHSAA Spirit State Championships.

SPRINGFIELD — The St. Clairsville cheerleading team took home the Division Four OHSAA Spirit State Championship on Sunday, Dec. 10, their third straight championship at the state-wide event.

Taking place at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, St. Clairsville out-performed six other teams to take home the gold.

“They did very well from a coach’s perspective, probably the best year they’ve had,” St. Clairsville co-coach Cathy Wolfe said. “This was probably our most successful year, performance-wise.”

Wolfe and co-coach Shawn Tomlan watched their team pull out a close win, their routine earning a 97.97 final score, less than a point better than second-place Minerva at 97.00.

St. C. had four seniors on their team.

“We have girls that are very dedicated and they return always wanting to take it to the next level,” Wolf said.

The Red Devils also won Best Band Chant and Best Fight Song during the preliminary round.

The routines performed last Sunday were categorized under Game Day routines, which differ from the traditional cheer routines.

“Game Day is called that because it is kind of replicating what we would do at a game,” Wolfe said. “We’re crowd leaders, lots of spiriting, crowd involvement, props like megaphones, signs, flags. You have your jumps, handsprings, but it’s not the traditional routine which is more dependent on tumbling, not so much use of crowd.”

With a third straight top finish, the Red Devils are quickly becoming the team to beat in their division.

“It’s important to us because we look at our cheerleaders as athletes,” Wolfe said. “For a competition to fall under the OHSAA, that is a very important competition to us because we recognize our team as athletes. To win it three years in a row, it’s pretty nice for us.”

Wheeling Park finishes

as runner-up in

Class-AAA States

HUNTINGTON — The Wheeling Park cheer team impressed at the WVSSAC State Cheer Compeitition on Dec. 9 from Marshall University, finishing as state runner-ups in Class-AAA.

Hurricane came in first at 89.93, while Wheeling Park came incredibly close, scoring an 89.53.

Woodrow Wilson came in third, and Brooke came in fourth as eight teams competed on the final stage in Huntington.

“We went first in our division, which is always kind of difficult because the judges don’t know what else is coming down the line,” Wheeling Park head coach Shawna Shepherd said. “I just told our kids they had to

go out there and hit, leave it all on the mat. Go out and have fun while you’re doing the skills, the tumbling, the stunts, the dance, the jumps, all the things that are incorporated into a three-minute routine that we’d been doing for the last four months.

“They did it pretty perfectly, I’ve gotten many comments since that people had not seen a Park squad look as good as this team.”

Wheeling Park had nine girls and two boys making up their squad, three seniors. This was Shepherd’s 19th year as coach, as the Patriots had won six of the last nine state titles.

“It’s a great group of kids, they’re like a little family,” Shepherd said.