Oak Hills High School’s super varsity gameday competition team makes it to nationals for the first time in OHHS history. Last school year, Oak Hills High School made history when the Game Day Cheer team made it to Nationals in 2025. The journey was filled with hard work, long practices, and a community of support that helped them get there.
Nationals is hosted by the UCA, also known as the “Universal Cheerleaders Association”. It is an event held in Orlando, Florida, at the “ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex”. It is an event of one thousand-plus high school cheerleading teams coming together to compete against one another for first place. There are approximately ten to twenty-five teams competing in each division. Leading up to this event, the Game Day competition was hard at work preparing. Coach Maria Huth says, “All of the team’s hard work definitely paid off. It was such an accomplishment to be the first team to go to nationals in our school’s history!”. So many practices, extra days of work, extra long hours, and endless fundraising. Parents and cheerleaders were equally hard at work. Parents were helping fundraise to cover the costs of travel, and competition fees. Another huge cost of our trip was Disney Park passes. The cheerleaders got to go to Disney World a couple of times throughout the duration of their stay. They went for business, but got to have a little fun on the side. They spent a couple days bonding with their teammates and best friends while in the parks. They visited Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios.
Game day competition is essentially the “All-Star” of school cheer. They choreographed a very fun and peppy routine that we performed for a whole season, bringing it to competitions and to our community. Requirements for these teams aren’t your typical “flips and kicks”. The girls get into groups and perform and show off stunts, 4 people to a group and one girl in the air. There are also very heavy tumbling skills such as, back handsprings, back tucks, fulls, and many more.
Nationals as a competition weighs so much more in our parts and minds rather than a typical competition. Cheerleader on the team, senior Alex Marshall say’s “Competing against a lot more teams, and being on a bigger stage, feeling everyone’s eyes on you is more nerve-racking than our normal local competition.” Marshall has a lot of experience with being on stage performing as a cheerleader, as she’s done it her whole life. Not only is it a big deal for the team, but it is a sense of accomplishment for their parents, too. Katie Stuart, one of the cheerleader’s moms, says, “From a parent’s perspective, it was incredible. Watching the team make history and seeing all of their hard work pay off was emotional and inspiring. Even just being at Nationals and representing Oak Hills was a huge accomplishment,” said Stuart.
With about a month off-season, they were back at it with a quick try-out session back in May and practices beginning in June. They have been tirelessly working all summer, preparing for competition season. Though they did not make it out of the first round of competition, that just gave Huth more motivation to brainstorm new changes she can make to ensure the girls make it next year. Huth says, “This year we are going to be conditioning more at practice to build up our stamina for our routine, and we sought out a different choreographer to create a routine that will make it out of prelims next year!” Huth stated.
If you’re interested in getting a sneak peek at the ladies’ new routine this year, Oak Hills is holding a competition on October 12th, and they will be performing there. Come support our girls and appreciate their hard work. “The Scots Showdown” itself is the beginning of the competition season in which they work to earn their bid to the 2026 Nationals. Stay tuned to find out if they’ll be competing in Nationals 2026.
