Taylor Smith, Sports Editor
On March 14, Clarion-Goldfield-Dows cheerleader MaKayla Beisel performed as a member of the All-State Cheerleading Team for the third and final time.
It may be the end of a special era for the senior, but she said in a recent interview that she was “just happy to be there with the same girls again.” After all, the reason she got involved in the sport in the first place was “just as something fun to do.”
Tryouts for the elite squad are held in October every year, and 20-45 of Iowa’s best cheerleaders are selected to perform a choreographed and practiced routine during the halftime break of a Friday game at the IHSAA Boys State Basketball Tournament.
By now, Beisel is a seasoned veteran in the cheerleading game and says that she doesn’t get nervous before big events like this anymore, but she did admit that the selection process itself has been known to induce jitters simply because “you don’t always know what the judges are thinking.”
The multi-sport athlete is also a vocal advocate for cheer and dance and wishes the general public understood how hard the sports actually are.
“I feel like a lot of schools don’t have a big cheer program, so they don’t see what it could be or what it could lead into,” she said. “I didn’t have a lot of experience with the stunts before getting selected. Once you get there, you actually see that it’s really hard.”
Beisel also explained that she’s endured lots of cheerleading related injuries over the years, but whether hurt or not she always remains fully committed to “the character that is in the music.”
“I’ve rolled my ankle, I’ve torn ligaments, I’ve had to perform on broken bones and you just can’t leave your team behind,” she stated. “When you have to push through stuff like that, you don’t always want to smile, but eventually you get there.”
Fortunately, there were plenty of genuine smiles during MaKayla’s last go-around as an All-State cheerleader this March.
