C-H cheer left out of state tournament despite winning WPIAL title
There were reasons to celebrate and also be disappointed for the Chartiers-Houston cheerleading squad at the sixth annual 2018 WPIAL Competitive Spirit Championships last Saturday.
In their first time competing in the event in three years, the Bucs won the Class A championship.
But they were not one of the 16 teams to qualify for the PIAA Championships Jan. 19-20 in Hershey.
“I knew prior to the competition that it was going to be difficult,” said C-H’s third-year coach Lauren Gregory. “We tried to be as prepared as we possibly could. Our goal this year was to win at the WPIAL championships, so we’re extremely proud of achieving that goal.”
Unlike in other sports where WPIAL champions advance to compete against other districts in the state, that isn’t the case for competitive spirit.
The WPIAL championship is separated by the number of students in the particular school to create three classifications, Class A, AA and AAA. The qualification for making a state appearance is based on the number of cheerleaders on the squad, splitting the groups into small, middle and large divisions.
Four teams from the small division, along with five medium, four large and three-at-large selections advanced to Hershey.
Despite Chartiers-Houston earning gold, several other “small division” schools – including Pine-Richland, South Fayette and Bethel Park – earned spots ahead of the Bucs with higher overall scores. Those three teams were competing in higher classifications for the WPIAL competitions but were considered small school teams for the PIAA tournament.
“There was a larger poll of schools in the small division,” Gregory said. “It is unfortunate that our road ended at the WPIAL championship, but we are still extremely proud of winning the WPIAL.
“We’ll take what we did this year and just learn from it. Most of the girls on our team had never competed at this event before. We have a younger team with only two seniors. The girls were happy with the outcome but were also disappointed at the same time.”