For Washburn Rural cheer, the road to a state title was four years in the making

TOPEKA, Kan. – Four years of from-the-ground-up work, two years of second-place finishes and one year in the pandemic, and Ellie Armstrong and her teammates on the Washburn Rural cheer team would still have to wait a week to figure out if they had done enough to finally reach an elusive state championship.

In an athletic activity that deeply feeds off of the energy of a crowd, the past year of cheerleading without that energy was a test of the team’s strength to perform in empty gyms and beside sparse bleachers. And it was a test the team proved it could meet with flying colors, having qualified for the state cheerleading championship.

Could it be enough though? Where in years past, the team might have been able to watch their competition perform — and even be spurred to cheer and yell louder by observing their rivals — this year, each team would have to perform in their individual gyms, with spectators and even parents locked away.

Then they would need to send in a video of their performance for the state championship in November, to be evaluated by judges and with results set to come in a week, not minutes as might be usual at an in-person meet.

“We said as a team, this is the one where we’re going to put it all,” Armstrong said.

So there was only one thing Armstrong and her teammates could do after leaving their best performance in four years — everything they’d had — on the mat in the mostly empty Washburn Rural High School gym.

Wait.

Washburn Rural’s road to state

In Kansas, competitive cheer, as athletic as it might be, is governed by the Kansas State High School Activities Association as a nonathletic activity. Before 2017, no state championship equivalent even existed in Kansas for cheer.

But that was also the first year Taylor McKaig, a veteran cheerer and WRHS 2010 alumna, took over as head cheerleading coach for Washburn Rural. The school had gone through five coaches in the previous four years, and from the beginning, McKaig knew she faced an uphill battle to establish some stability for the inconsistent program.

“One of my big goals when I took over the program was establishing consistent techniques for the kids, but also a positive environment and making it a really great experience for them throughout high school,” McKaig said.

That year, the team set a goal of making it to the inaugural state championship — the Game Day Spirit Showcase, hosted in Topeka’s Stormont Vail Events Center. The team came close, placing 7th but just missing cutoff for the state championship finals between the top six teams.

The next year, the team went further and placed second to Blue Valley North’s team. In 2019 — McKaig’s third year as a coach — the team again fell just short, taking second to the Blue Valley Northwest team. It became another front between teams in the 6A classification for the state’s largest high schools, most of which are concentrated in the Johnson County area.

“Anyone who was a part of that team that year vividly remembers that feeling of not winning, and when we stepped off the mat, we were celebrating the fact we were second in state,” McKaig said. “However, it was a bit bittersweet since we wanted that state title, but it made winning the title this year that much sweeter, because we’d worked twice as hard to get to that point.

“Once we hit that milestone, though, we became less underdogs, and I think people are starting to realize the level of skills we bring to the table, but also how serious we are about it,” she added.

For all the joy of being recognized among the best in the state, it was also painful to repeatedly miss being called the absolute best, said Armstrong, and that pain lingered around the team.

So they got to work.

One of the benefits of not being regulated as an athletic sport in Kansas is that cheer has much greater leeway to practice, McKaig said. Some schools only sponsor cheer teams per three-month periods, that typically correlate with sports like basketball or football.

But Washburn Rural’s team practices year round. Tryouts are usually in March, with regular practices starting in May. The cheerleaders go to cheer camp in June, with summer weights and some competitions held in July. In August, the team starts building up its choreography and routines for the state championship, because come fall, football starts and the team channels its energies there.

After the state championship in November, the team gets straight to cheering at basketball games, with that sport’s season ending just a few weeks before tryouts start again in March.

“We’re saying “Go Blues” all year,” joked Armstrong.

As with any other sport or school activity, the team saw a significant disruption during the past of the pandemic. One rule KSHSAA issued is that cheerleaders may not wear masks while stunting, similar to a rule on jewelry, since masks could become a tangle hazard or even cover a student’s eyes while in the air.

McKaig said the team’s coaches and school officials worked with county health officials to figure out how to best remove masks for those portions of the team’s routines — a benefit not every school had.

The team also lost many of its in-person events, and even most game days have seen heavy restrictions on fan attendance, which the team feeds off of in practicing how to amp up a crowd for the state championship.

“We had to dig really deep to find motivation, especially since we didn’t even have parents in the bleachers,” Armstrong said. “But we found ways to make it fun.”

‘We’re kind of legit’

When the time came for the 2020 state championship performance in November, the team had fared relatively well during its season, but the nerves were still high.

In the absence of any crowd to cheer on the cheerers, McKaig arranged for team alumni from past years to record a video of encouragement for the current team. Their message was simple, but encouraging: win state, for those of them before who came so close but never quite made it.

The team found inspiration in that message to not only do it for those alumni, but for each other.

“We were all going to be happy for each other, and we were doing it for each other and our coaches,” the senior said.

But even with their very best performance, the team could not know how well it had done comparatively in its routines for the Game Day Spirit Showcase, which focuses on cheerleading, crowd leading, band chanting and performing the school’s fight song.

A week later, the team returned and gathered for the awards presentation, to be done remotely by Zoom. Before that presentation, the team also watched the other teams’ performances, with each team member mentally comparing themselves against the competition, particularly the Johnson County schools.

Although Washburn Rural is the only local 6A school, McKaig — who also coaches at Washburn University and opened an area cheerleading academy in fall 2020 — said other Shawnee County schools were rooting for the team as well.

“We had shown our hunger (for the state championship) to everyone, and other schools were hungry for us to win, too,” McKaig said.

The state championship presentation started by announcing the winners in reverse chronological order, and when the presenter got to the second-place result, a hush fell over the team.

“It felt like just yesterday we’d been in this position and couldn’t believe we’d made it to at least second,” McKaig said. “Now we had that experience and wanted more than second. It was sitting in the same place we’d been in the prior two years, and feeling a lot of the same intensity and drive for that state title, knowing all those other teams have felt that, too.”

This time would be different though. As the presenter read through Blue Valley Northwest’s name, the Washburn Rural cheerleaders erupted at the only conclusion left.

They were finally state champions.

“The room exploded, and people were crying and celebrating,” Armstrong said. “All of the work and effort we’d put in was worth it.”

The team would go on to compete and win the National Cheerleaders Association’s virtual championship in November as well. The tourney was somewhat of a stand-in for the regular national championship, which was canceled this year because of COVID-19.

That additional title, as well as the continued success of the past four years, proves that Washburn Rural’s finally achieved state title was not a fluke, McKaig said.

“It made us realize, we’re kind of legit,” Armstrong said.

Building a team for the future

Months later, the team’s state championship rings have arrived, and earlier in April, the Auburn-Washburn Board of Education recognized the cheer team, as well as Washburn Rural’s other state champs, for their notable seasons. Kansas Sen. Brenda Dietrich, a former superintendent of the district, presented the team with a resolution from the Kansas Senate commending the team for a job well done.

But for all the celebration and success that this year has been, the team is already looking to the future, McKaig said. Selected cheerleaders from the March tryouts start practice in a couple of weeks, and the team is trying to ride the high of the state title to build stronger bonds and team morale, the coach said.

“Even though we’ve won a state title, we still want so much more,” she said, “and I think that’s the best part about having all these kids in the program — we always want more. We know when to celebrate our wins and achievements, we’ve broken some huge barriers over these last four years, and we’ve made something really special.”

Armstrong, who is off to K-State next year and has tried out for its cheer team, said cheer taught her patience and understanding, and how to be a better person.”

“It’s been my escape,” she said. “I can have a bad day at school and come to cheer practice and know I’ll have a better day.”

After their state title, the team is optimistic more people might recognize the kind of work and dedication that goes into cheerleading. Armstrong said she hopes more people will take the team seriously.

“They’re like, ‘Oh, you cheer on the sidelines?'” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Do you have a state title yet?'”

McKaig said she hopes the sport grows, especially locally. Outside of her duties as Washburn Rural’s coach, she started an annual rural cheer showcase for any team, public or private or even outside of school, to come demonstrate their routines, while also networking with other schools and even college recruiters.

“I think in some people’s eyes, (the state title) might bring more legitimacy to cheerleading, but I ultimately don’t care if people think it is a sport,” McKaig said. “It is a sport, and we’re fine being recognized as an activity so that we can practice when we want to practice and work on what we want when we want.”

With her original freshmen now set to graduate next month, McKaig reflected on her four years coaching the team, with the past three having her sister Tateum Hughes at her side as assistant coach.

“This program has been a passion of mine since I was in high school, so to be able to step in and invest in these kids and their technique, but also building them up as humans outside of cheerleading has been one of my favorite parts of this,” McKaig said. “Saying goodbye to my first freshman class is difficult, but they’ve done a great job and they’ve made me as much better as I’ve made them.

“They’ve set a great tone for the program, and we want to continue to achieve greatness and hopefully repeat state titles.”