In the spotlight

Jay County High School’s cheerleaders have a long tradition of excellence at the Indiana State Fair.

This year, however, the spotlight is shifting.

The East Jay and West Jay middle school squads will take the mat shortly after 10 a.m. Saturday, but the JCHS squad will not compete on the grandstand stage at Indiana State Fairgrounds.

“There’s a lot of pressure,” said West Jay eighth grader Mattie Ardizzone.

“It’s scary,” agreed East Jay eighth grader Grace Brewster. “I feel like we kind of have a big name to own up to with the high school.”

The Patriots were a top-three squad in each of the eight state fair competitions from 2008 through 2015. That included championships in 2010 and ’12 and four runner-up efforts as well.

Certainly, the local middle school squads have had their moments to shine as well. West Jay soared to its first state fair title in 2014. East Jay finished atop the standings in 2010.

But with the high school squad gone for the first time this year, the focus of Jay County cheerleading at the state fair will be entirely on the middle school groups.

“It makes us nervous,” said WJMS coach Brea Burcham, who has five sixth graders on her squad of eight girls. “They’ve had to step up into big roles and learn a lot. … They’ve had a lot of stress trying to learn the new things … but from the beginning to now they’ve really improved.”

The high school coaches, whose girls spent June working on sideline cheering for football games and then last month worked on competition skills, had planned to stop going to the state fair as their squad transitioned to a focus on Universal Cheerleaders Association nationals in the winter. The state fair scoresheet, JCHS coach Ashley Loucks said, doesn’t line up well with those used by the state and UCA competitions.

“We work all summer for that routine. And then the minute we’re done with it, we essentially chuck it out the window and we move into ICC (Indiana Cheer Championship),” said Loucks, whose squad is coming off of a seventh-place finish at nationals in February. “That was our main reason.”

And the experience in Indianapolis last year — rain halted the competition and there was no back-up plan, leaving squads nowhere to perform the routines they had worked on all summer — made it easier to step away from the decades-long tradition.

With the forecast mostly clear this year — skies are supposed to be mostly sunny Saturday in Indianapolis with just a 10-percent chance of rain — both middle school squads are looking forward to the chance to show off what they’ve learned this summer.

For West Jay, the big hit is tumbling that includes six Eagles performing roundoff back handsprings into back tucks. For East Jay, each of the first two mounts include the girls in the air performing extension skills.

As Saturday’s competition has approached, both squads have been working on the little things, understanding that the difference between advancing to the finals will likely be in the details. The top five squads out of 10 competing in the preliminaries will move on to the evening’s finals.

The last time East Jay competed at the state fair in 2015, it did not advance from the preliminaries, so no one on the mat for the Chiefs this weekend will have finals experience. And only two eighth graders remain from the West Jay squad that placed fourth two years ago.

With those details in mind and a strong group of other squads involved, both middle schools have set their sights on simply making it to the evening performance against a field that includes 2015 state champion Fall Creek and perennial powerhouse Pendleton Heights.

“There are some very good squads going this year,” said Burcham. “It’s going to be a fight for both us and East Jay to get into the top five to go on.”

“For East and West Jay both, we’re really going to be fighting up against those other teams just so we can make it to top five and make it into the finals,” agreed Cash. “And I hope that both East Jay and West Jay get to make it on.”