Sarah Watterson, started her cheerleading career when she was just 5 years old. Now at age 17, she is preparing to enter her senior year in high school. Ms. Watterson is an honors student and Varsity cheerleader at Northern High School in Owings, MD. She is also involved in many extracurricular activities including volunteering and sharing her skills with the Calvert County Special Olympics’ cheerleading team. She has recently achieved a very special honor of being the only Maryland athlete selected as a finalist for the National Cheerleader of the Year Scholarship.
Twenty high school junior and senior cheerleaders from across the U.S. were named as finalists for the 2012 National Cheerleader of the Year Scholarship Competition. The National Selection Committee, a group of spirit industry coaches, state association leaders and cheerleading experts, made the announcement May 15, 2012. Three stages of competition will determine two top cheerleaders – one representing high school cheerleading and one representing all star cheerleading. An audition started the process and those who made it through auditions were scored during ‘Stage Two’ which included an audition form evaluation, interview, and cumulative grade point average.
The finalists will now travel to Fayetteville, NC June 17, 2012 to compete for $2,500 of scholarship monies and the honor of National Cheerleader of the Year. The final stage of competition will include a cheerleading magazine photo shoot, 2 rounds of interviews, and a technical performance. These scores added to the preliminary scores will determine the top two cheerleaders.
The National Cheerleader of the Year Scholarship Competition was established in 1992 in recognition of the nation’s most talented cheerleaders. The competition is just one of the many events included in a week long coach and cheerleader training called EDGE-U-Cation held on the campus of Methodist University in Fayetteville, NC by one of the industry’s top five cheerleading companies, Cheer Ltd., Inc
