Iowa School For The Deaf Wins 1st Place at Cheer Competition
The Iowa School for the Deaf has made history, but not in the way you would imagine. The school's four-person cheerleading team has won the first cheerleading competition in the school's history!
ISD or the Iowa School for the Deaf is located in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The Des Moines Register reports that like many small, rural school districts in Iowa, they have a much smaller student body than larger schools. ISD has 99 students ranging from pre-K through high school. Fewer students mean fewer sports teams and other extracurricular activities. But don't tell that to the school's cheerleading team.
The Register reports that the routine was only a couple of minutes long, but that it came with a host of obstacles to overcome. At least one team member had never even cheered before she learned the routine. But that didn't stop them from taking first place at the 34th Annual Great Plains Schools for the Deaf Conference. So how do cheerleaders that can't hear cheer? As you'll see in a report from ABCNews, there is no music in the background. Only cheer coaches banging a large drum so that the performers can keep time.
In the end, the cheerleaders from ISD proved that it doesn't matter how big your school is if you're willing to put in the work and trust your teammates to do the same! The Register reports that two words kept coming up in their interview with the team. Trust and confidence. Now that is something to cheer about.