Broadneck High School Tumbles Into Winning Cheerleading State Championship

In November, Summer Kiser, Ella Thompson, Olivia Valentine, Alyssa Albright, Taylor Hannon, Brianna Pumphrey, Avery Jansen, Cassidy Trew and Janae Woodward took to the mat and became the first team in Broadneck High School (BHS) cheerleading history to win a state championship.

“This year’s attitude and our athletes’ buy-in was the biggest difference,” said head coach Dakota Richardson-Lau, who has coached at Broadneck since graduating college in 2019.

While she’s brought the cheerleading team to regionals every year and they’ve made it to states for the past three years, they have always felt like underdogs. This year, Richardson-Lau and fellow coaches Danica Oak and Tierra Price set the goal of being state champions from day one. The athletes were each given a journal, where they reflected each week and then shared at practice. “That really contributed to each athlete individually visualizing themselves as a champion, but also collectively as a team,” Richardson-Lau said.

However, even while striving for such a high goal, the team maintained their underdog status throughout this year. They scraped their way into regionals, just making it into the last spot. They fought their way into the state championship. Until the moment Broadneck was awarded first place, no one around them was expecting that result.

“Even the cameraman was shooting this other team, waiting for their reaction video,” Richardson-Lau said. “And I just continued to encourage my team. ‘Keep your heads down. We got there. We’re that number one spot. … Don’t even look over at what other people are doing.’”

Broadneck’s routine shifted this year. The rubric was slightly different than previous years, so for the first time, the team dropped cheer elements such as signs. Rather than ending with stunts or a pyramid like usual, this year’s routine began with baskets and stunting and ended with dance. The coaches drew inspiration from what had worked for previous state champions to try to play to the judges’ objective and subjective scoring.

Richardson-Lau also credited the senior class for playing a large role in the team’s accomplishment. Sydney Sample, Hannon and Pumphrey were all cheer captains this year, and they stepped up to the plate. “Their leadership and their trust in us as coaches truly made a difference,” Richardson-Lau said.

All three seniors had been with the team for their entire time at Broadneck, as had many of the juniors, giving the coaches and the athletes a lot of time to grow together as a team. That time together also helped them bring their stunting skills up a notch.

The athletes’ hard work wasn’t the only type of cheering to help the team achieve victory. “This win couldn’t have happened without our village of Broadneck,” Richardson-Lau said. “Our athletes, our coaching staff, our families, even our Broadneck community. Everyone was just so encouraging, and really believing in us as a team really made all of the difference this year.”