All-purpose athletes: A closer look at West Linn cheer’s path to a 6A large state championship

For the West Linn cheer team, taking home a 6A large traditional state championship wasn’t the lone goal of the 2023-24 school year.

As a cheer team, these Lions obviously had other responsibilities.

“So our program has 36 athletes in it,” head coach Shannon Maloney said. “And we are, first and foremost, a community program.”

So, when Maloney’s group took home the title in the state’s top classification on Saturday, Feb. 10, she regarded it as West Linn’s second prize of the season. The first was the opportunity to represent the school at sporting events year-round.

“We love cheering for our school, we have an incredible student body, and that’s truly where the base of the program is,” Maloney said. “And the part the girls love the most.”

Still, the first-place finish in the two-day event at Oregon City High School was a climax for the Lions, who brought home the first cheerleading state championship in school history, adding to a recent stockpile of Oregon-shaped trophies at West Linn High.

Ultimately, the tumbling section lifted the Lions to the crown, as West Linn scored 36.80 to finish more than two points ahead of the field. Finishing second in the building skills portion of the competition to Aloha, the Lions needed to deliver on their tumbling and jumps, and they did.

Still, Maloney credits her group’s improvement in building skills as the true catalyst of the championship effort, as tumbling was an established strength for West Linn.

“We knew that our tumbling was going to be strong,” Maloney said. “We knew that we had the overall scoresheet because these girls perform amazingly, but the building was the one sheet that we had really focused on.”

While the Warriors scored 37.10 in building skills to top West Linn’s 35.50, the Lions bested Aloha by 4.20 points in tumbling to take an event-leading score of 38.50 on their overall routine.

Ultimately, West Linn finished with a score of 110.80 after zero penalty deductions, while Aloha took second with a score of 107.70.

According to Maloney, the path to taking home state titles while tending to other sporting events day-in and day-out isn’t an easy one. As a result, the payoff for winning it all was huge.

“We [practice] Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and games typically on a Friday, and then you roll into competition season,” Maloney said. “So they are putting in five days a week working on this routine that they’re trying to put into state.”

Still, it wasn’t just hard work that went into the Lions’ championship performance. According to Maloney, the winning routine was carefully crafted based on both West Linn’s strengths and the taste of an average judge.

This year’s Lions prove there are many steps to building a title-claiming effort, and most of them come outside of competition.

“Walking into state we had competed three times with this routine, and two of the times we won first, but we got second place in our competition just before state, so we knew we had to bring our best routine for state,” Maloney said. “If you look at it, difficulty score can only move up one to two points, but your execution score has a much larger range, so we increased our execution at state for building and that's what took us over the top.”

After finishing as runner-up last year, West Linn was on a mission this winter, and like something out of a classic sports movie, the Lions redeemed themselves.

“We are so incredibly excited. This year, we’re very fortunate as a high school program to be able to celebrate the fact that this is the first state championship for West Linn High School Cheer,” Maloney said. “And not only did we hit state championship status, but we also were grand champs for the day, (meaning) we beat all other scores that day on the scoresheet, which is incredible.”

Still, it was a swift trip back to work for these Lions, as boys and girls basketball playoffs are right around the corner, and both teams out of West Linn are looking to make a run and in need of some cheers.

Just days after their confetti settled, the cheerleading team was right back to doing what it loves most.