Second at State Fair

INDIANAPOLIS — For three straight years, Jay County had battled for the title.
And it did again Saturday.
The Patriots put together another near-perfect routine on their biggest day of the year, coming up just short of winning back-to-back championships for the first time in 25 years.
Jay County High School’s cheerleading squad finished as the runner-up in the large varsity division at the Indiana State Fair Cheerleading Competition while Tri-West took the title. The Bruins had finished third behind JCHS and Hamilton Southeastern last year.
“The preliminary performance we were kind of flat, which I think fired us up for the evening,” said JCHS coach Mindy Weaver. “I thought that was one of our best performances.”
The Patriots’ expectations have risen so high that there were some tears of disappointment from the girls immediately following their announcement as the second-place squad. But the effort marked Jay County’s fourth straight season finishing in the top two, the best such run for the squad since 1985 through ’88.
“That’s tremendous, because a lot of these squads compete year round and compete nationally,” said Weaver. “I’m very happy. We talked about a lot of things from (preliminaries) and I think we corrected everything. Number one, we wanted them to have more fun. And when they came off the mat, they were having fun and were proud of themselves.”
Jay County’s middle school squads also both were among the top eight squads qualifying for the finals after Saturday morning’s preliminary round. East Jay’s Chiefs finished in fourth place in the finals, and the West Jay Eagles were seventh.
“They did amazing,” said EJMS coach Sarah Ullom. “We’ve talked a lot about confidence … since half our squad is new. They don’t know what to expect at state fair. We just told them to go out there, have fun and give it their all and what will be will be.”
“I couldn’t have been happier,” said WJMS coach Cheree McCallister. “We improved from the preliminaries to the finals. The girls worked hard all summer. I was very pleased.”[[In-content Ad]]