GC&SU’s Paige Armstrong national cheerleader of the year

By Julie Kane
Staff Writer

Georgia College & State University freshman cheerleader Paige Armstrong is American Cheerleader Magazine’s National Cheerleader of the Year.
Armstrong was selected as the Cheerleader of the Month for June 2001 after being seen by American Cheerleader Magazine’s editor at a competition for the National Cheerleader of the Year scholarship. Armstrong won the scholarship.
“I feel so honored to be National Cheerleader of the Year. It is a great reward that shows off all my hard work and dedication to cheerleading, ” said Armstrong.
“I think the biggest contributor to my winning should go to Dr. Jerry Fly, cheerleading coach, for asking people to go to the web site and vote,” Armstrong added.
The Cheerleader of the Year Award is a competition among the magazine’s 2001 cover cheerleaders. Thanks to votes cast for Armstrong on the American Cheerleader website and votes mailed in by American Cheerleader subscribers, Armstrong proved to be the best of the best.
“Paige is a wonderful person. She works very, very hard, I can’t think of anyone who is more deserving of this award,” Head Cheerleading Coach Jerry Fly said.
Dancing from age 2, Armstrong was destined to be a wonderful cheerleader, although she didn’t actually begin the sport until fifth grade. She has been cheering for seven years.
Armstrong graduated from Pinewood Christian Academy in Glenville, Georgia, where she cheered for four years. She was awarded a $10,000 scholarship, the Jennifer Erin Morris Memorial Scholarship, which is awarded to outstanding high school seniors who have accomplished extraordinary achievements and who exhibit outstanding personal character. The scholarship is a national one and brings together people from all over the United States who have an extraordinary mix of outstanding character development, high academic achievement, cheerleading ability and community service.
At GC&SU, Armstrong is a GC&SU cheerleader and has also been involved in softball, track, basketball and dancing. A mass communication major, she is extremely active in Baptist Student Union and Campus Outreach.
“It is a thrill for Paige to win National Cheerleader of the Year. It is well deserved. In addition to bringing recognition to Paige, it also brings wonderful publicity to the school and the cheerleading team,” Fly said.
“I hope it will bring much deserved recognition to the school and the GC&SU cheerleading team. The cheerleaders at Georgia College are wonderful, and since there is no football team, their talent often goes unnoticed, so hopefully this will bring the credit the team deserves,” added Armstrong.
Over the weekend the Bobcat cheerleaders placed fourth at the University of Central Florida Competition out of the seventeen teems competing in their division.
“I was very pleased with the success of the team,” said Fly. “We had a team filled with sophomores and freshmen, and the future looks right bright.”
The winner of the championship was Central Arkansas, followed by Hawaii Pacific in second place, Northwest Missouri State in third, then came GC&SU.
Sixteen teams qualified for the National Competition and eight of the sixteen were selected after the preliminary round to complete in the final competition.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 12 2002. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry