“I never ever thought I’d be a high school cheer coach.

I coached a high school dance team for 33 years. I only stepped in last year when the other two coaches were let go. I started coaching dance when I was 19 years old when I was going to school in southern Oregon. I started coaching the dance team at Ashland High School and I’ve always loved that age group. I know what coaches and teachers had done for me in High School and I wanted to be that leader in High School kids age wise because I know how important it is and the difference it can make.

Coaching has taught me to celebrate progress over perfection. Working towards a goal can be so hard and when you obtain those baby steps along the way to get to the main goal it is so worth celebrating. I do that for my athletes and for myself.

I think my proudest moment was last year at state with the cheer team. Getting them to a top 9 finish out of 25 schools being in a division that’s a 5A and 6A split, if we wouldn’t have had that split we would have gotten a 5th place trophy at state. And the cheer team in prior years hasn’t even made close to this, so knowing that we have done everything we could to get them to that point was really exciting and seeing the accomplishment on their faces was so worth it.”