SE: K-State Cheer Looks Back at NCAs as a Start to Even More

By Corbin McGuire

More than a week after it happened, Caroline Shannon still comes to tears when talking about the K-State cheer team's experience at the NCA Collegiate Cheer Championships on April 4-5 in Daytona, Florida.

For the senior captain, and the rest in their last year on the team, it was a perfect sendoff to what she hopes can be the start to building an even stronger program.

"It was a really fun moment," Shannon said, "especially for the seniors because we can look back and say, 'I was there the first year K-State competed.'"

K-State had not competed at NCAs, the pinnacle competition for the sport, in more than a decade. Some on the team had never cheered competitively their lives. Most had never competed on a stage even close to this, with thousands in attendance and against some of the best teams in the country.

All of this added up to extreme nervousness for K-State. It also made how the Wildcats handled it even more impressive. They advanced out of the first day and finished 11^thout of 15 teams in their division, less than four points out of first and with one of the highest stunt ratings in the division.

"The fact that we went out there and weren't completely deer in the headlights was impressive because that is a huge stage," Shannon said. "I'm very excited for next year. I could not be prouder to be one of the first two captains to lead the team through this because it was definitely unseen territory."

Ethan Ansell, the team's other senior captain, said the experience reassured everyone that they belonged there, erasing any doubt they might have had beforehand.

"The team learned that we can do well if we put our minds to it, and we are worth going to competition," he said. "A lot of people on the team didn't have competition experience. I feel like the people who are going to be on the team again will have that experience, and it will really help to push us further to do even better than what we did this time."

K-State head coach Dani Ruoff agreed.

"I definitely think it was a learning experience because so many had not been on that stage before," she said. "I think the experience, for one, of getting out in front of people, but also learning how to work as a team to make this goal, because this was a major, major project that we worked on, and we worked on for a long time. So, it was a team effort, a lot harder than what some of them thought.

"I think they've learned a lot, the work ethic and how to work toward that goal to make it a finished product at the end."

Just to get there was a major step for the program.

Ruoff took over the program 11 years ago, when the team's focus was on gameday support. Competitions were put on the backburner for a while, with a few small stunt competitions being the exception.

When Gene Taylor was hired as K-State's athletics director in 2017, the opportunity to give the cheer team more to work for began. Ruoff, in one of her first meetings with Taylor, laid out a plan to return to competing. Taylor gave her his full support.

Last fall, a competitive team was formed, via tryouts, and it started working toward a goal to get to NCAs. After a fall season of supporting football and volleyball on the sideline, and a winter of doing the same for both basketball teams, it served as a final reward the cheer team could have as motivation to continue working hard.

"We love traveling and going to gamedays for basketball, football and everything. This trip was cool because it was about us. It was just different," Shannon said. "It was really rewarding after four years of working really hard."

"I'm just really proud of them," Ruoff added, "and I'm thankful for the athletic department and the university for supporting us because it was awesome for our program."

Kansas State University Athletics

SE: K-State Cheer Looks Back at NCAs as a Start to Even More

Players Mentioned

Ethan Ansell

Caroline Shannon

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