Last Friday, Nov. 19, the De Soto High School girls dance and cheer teams placed at the KSHSAA Championships. Both cheer and dance placed in the top ten and finished the year strong. 

The DHS cheer team placed sixth amongst sixteen other teams in the 5A division. The final score of the cheer team was 85.45 points, less than half a point from placing fifth. 

The competition lasted only a day, but it was packed full with little down time. At the competition, the cheerleaders competed three separate times. The chants included a crowd leading chant, band chant and the school fight song.

Senior cheer captain Presley Reinerstein had lots of success in her cheer career. Placing both her freshman and sophomore year and then finishing sixth her senior year.

“I loved seeing all of the hard work our team put in pay off. It was sad last year not placing, so being able to make it to finals and placing was great,” Reinerstein said.

Since this was Reinerstein’s fourth and final year as a part of the De Soto cheer team, the hardest part at state was not competing. 

“We’re still going to compete together and other team members are going to nationals, but it was just sad knowing that this was our last major competition as a team,” Reinerstein said. “I’m just excited we still have basketball season to cheer for.”

Not only did the cheer team have success at state but so did the De Soto Diamonds dance team. The Diamonds were able to place seventh falling two points short of placing sixth. 

This is the third year that KSHSAA has hosted a championship competition. The first year was online which left the Diamonds unable to compete. Last year the dance team did not make the finals, but this year they were able to finally place.

Senior dance captain, Olivia Dondzilla, has been part of the dance team for four years and said the competition was not easy.

Competition was difficult for the team this year due to the Diamonds due to the number of members..

“In finals we were by far the smallest team there which put us at a disadvantage for crowd entertainment and crowd leading,” Dondzilla said. 

However, despite the adversity the team faced, the Diamonds were able to watch their hard work pay off. 

“When they announced the top teams moving on to finals, we were all very nervous. Once they announced that De Soto was moving on to finals, we were all very excited and there was a lot of screaming.” Dondzilla said, “It felt great because we have never made it to finals and the competition was harder than ever.”

After both cheer and dance teams were able to qualify for finals, the reward did not stop there. Time and effort put into cheer and dance was rewarded with a sixth and seventh place medal.