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Ten-year-old champions cheerleading at Rossland Summit School

Thanks to one student's perseverance, Rossland Summit School now has a cheerleading team.
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Members of the Rossland Summit School cheerleading team practiced their lifts and routines at an after school practice.

It took enthusiasm and perseverance to start a cheerleading team at Rossland Summit School, but 10-year-old Kaydance Nowak has plenty of both.

Nowak asked her principal and vice-principal for permission to start a team, and cleared every hurdle that was set in front of her.

“I went to cheerleading camp and I’ve always really liked cheerleading, and I love Taylor Swift and she does cheerleading, so I just kept on asking the principal until they finally said yes,” Nowak explained, when asked why she wanted to start the team.

To get the team approved, Nowak needed to find a teacher sponsor and over eight students who wanted to participate. She found a teacher and 15 students from Grades 2 to 5 ended up joining the team.

“They’re all super excited,” says Holli Nowak-Weir, Nowak’s mother.

The RSS cheerleaders have been learning lifts and routines from their adult supervisors (including Nowak-Weir and one other adult with cheerleading experience), and have also been making up their own cheers.

The squad hopes to cheer for the school’s basketball and soccer teams, but the ultimate goal is to compete in cheerleading competitions.

“It’s not something that is offered anywhere in the Kootenays, so they would have to travel to the Okanagan,” says Nowak-Weir. “They’re trying to get money together to get uniforms actually, because they’re supposed to have uniforms, pompoms and such.”

To raise the money they need, squad members have been holding lemonade sales around town, and Nowak also keeps a jar at school so she can collect donations.

So far the team has raised $38 towards their uniforms.