By Matt Browning

The Sedgwick Cardinals were voted as the Wichita Small School Cheer Squad of the Year. Between the business of the football and basketball seasons, the Cardinals schedule for six months is hectic.

“The majority of my team plays volleyball in the fall and basketball in the winter so we work our schedules around those practices,” Sedgwick cheer coach Cristie Francis said. “We usually practice once a week for two hours and on the weeks that we have a halftime performance we will practice twice.”

Outside of the usual routines during football and basketball games, there is more that goes into practices on performance week.

“Our practices consist of stunting, jumping, perfecting motions and going over routines and band dances,” Francis said. “We performed twice during football and three times so far this basketball season and have another performance on the horizon.”

The selection process for the team is unique in that half of the performance score for those trying out comes from people not associated with the school.

“We have had judges come from Bethel, WSU, KSU and FHSU to score our cheerleaders on their abilities,” Francis said. “This score accounts for 50 percent of their tryout score. The other 50 percent comes from teacher evaluations, grades and attendance. This type of scoring gives us well balanced cheerleaders.”

Francis said she wants her cheerleaders to not only represent the school, but the community itself.

“Cheerleaders should always have a positive outlook and smile no matter what the score is,” Francis said. “The crowd should always be able to look to the cheerleaders for a smile and to lead them through a rough game.”

Members of the 2022-2023 cheer squad are Aubrey McGaugh, Alivia Burns, Ally Rueda, Mady Evans, Blythe Harris, Gaby Petersen, Ethan Tolin, Jadelyn Pohlman and Emma Koehn.