KANE — The Kane Area High School cheerleading team competed at the PIAA State Cheerleading Championships over the weekend at the Giant Center in Hershey, and finished 25th of 41 teams in the Small Varsity Division.

Kane competed in Group A and while the squad finished 17 of 20 in group A, when combined with scores from the Group B teams in Small Varsity, they were 25th overall of the 41 teams represented in the Small Division.

Coach Chris Niklaus said the group teams are placed in was fully randomized by the PIAA. The Small Varsity Division was the largest division at the PIAA State Championships this year.  Unlike other PIAA sports, cheer must compete against all size schools from A-AAAAAA. The average size school Kane competed against had 397 females in their high school compared to Kane’s 137 by PIAA numbers. “To finish where we did against those odds is super impressive,” said Niklaus.

“This was our first time at states and I couldn’t be happier with how the team performed,” said Niklaus. “We had awesome support from our fans and parents. We would also like to thank the teams from Keystone and Elk County Catholic (St. Marys) who were there supporting us when we took the floor on Friday night. It was so great to see the support of your competitors and this is what separates cheer from other athletic activities.”

Niklaus said the squad’s expectations of states this year was to put their best out there and let the judges do the rest.

“We put one of our most energetic and overall best routines on the floor,” said Niklaus. “There were some mistakes that we will work on fixing as our season continues, but the coaching staff couldn’t be happier with how things worked out for us at states.”

The team will head to Cleveland to Hard Rockin Nationals on Saturday and will their non-tumble routine on the floor for the first time as well as its regular varsity routine.