Squad Advances

Bottom row: Brianna Plemons, Hannah Foster, Violet Shubert, Emily Dawson, Kadrian Mandra, Alexis Lowe
Top Row: Sierra Eggleton, Cheyanne Eggleton, Jodi Hardy, Katie Morgan, Destiny McGammon, Destiny Henderson.
Coaches not pictured Jennifer and Leona Layman.

Sweetwater Wildcats, Young Champion Level Three Tennessee State Champions. This team consists of girls from Monroe, Meigs, McMinn and Loudon counties. The girls have earned the privilege to represent the state at the national level on July 25 in Grand Rapids, MI.

The team is working to raise money to pay the costs associated with travel and lodging. They will be having a car wash at the Advance Auto Parts on Hwy 68 in Sweetwater on June 13 starting at 8am. On June 20 there will be a multi-family rummage sale at the green building across from the fruit market on Main Street in Sweetwater starting at 8 am. On June 27 we will be doing double duty at the Sonic on Hwy 68 in Sweetwater. There will be a car wash in the rear parking lot and parents will be car-hopping that day as well. So please stop by one of these fundraisers and support your local cheerleaders that have worked so hard to do our great state proud.

Young Champions originally started as the Bonnie Blue Bells. About 60 years ago, Bonnie Hood, the founder, organized a baton-twirling group consisting of girls from the Grand Rapids area. This group was called the Bonnie Blue Bells. Bonnieis devotion to changing the lives of children has been instilled in the staff and now the program has grown tremendously over the last 50 years. With the support of YMCA, YWCA, Parks and Recreations, and Community educations we are now in 12 different states and over 150 locations in Michigan.

Young Champions strives to offer a quality low cost program to communities. In doing this we hope that children who may not have the chance to participate in other programs will now have the opportunity to be involved in extracurricular activities.

All of Young Champions programs are geared for children ages 4-15 to help promote and instill self-esteem, self-confidence, coordination, physical fitness, flexibility and team work within a fun and exciting program. Our Cheer program is our largest and most successful program and has been around for 15 years. In all programs we provide tournaments, competitions, parades and testing advancements; although the coach will encourage the whole team to participate it is not mandatory.

We have three sessions a year Fall, Spring and Summer. Each session has a regional competition in which the top three teams in each division go to State competition. The teams earn points depending on what place they are awarded at States. Those points determine if they have the opportunity to go to the National competition that year in the summer. Nationals are held in a different state each year. The last three years they have been held in Knoxville TN, Madison WI, and ST Louis MO. This years competition will be in Grand Rapids MI.