The Ozark High School STUNT team has won the first-ever 2026 USA Cheer Missouri High School STUNT State Championship. What makes the accomplishment even sweeter for the cheerleading program is that it just launched the STUNT team in December.
Teams compete head-to-head in a four-quarter format, performing the same pre-set routines and earning points based on the execution of skills such as partner stunts, pyramids, jumps, tumbling and team routines. It’s played in four quarters.
Ozark Head Cheerleading Coach Tess Keller said the win feels surreal.
“Kind of jumping into it this year, learning how it’s very not the same (as traditional cheerleading) and then going and winning it for the first time, it’s just like it’s hard to find words,” she said. “I’m just so grateful.”
It’s taken a lot of hard work to get to this point, according to Keller. “Hours of practicing, sitting down with the kids, watching your film, pulling the 8-count sheet, reviewing the film, let’s apply our corrections, go back, we’re going to do the same routine again, see what corrections we fixed, look for more things that we can correct,” she said. “It’s very tedious, time consuming.”
This was the first state championship in Missouri for high school teams, but Keller said they didn’t compete against any first-year teams. Many of those competing formed teams when STUNT became a sport -- around two years ago, she said. And nobody in the state had been able to compete at level 6, the highest level, according to Keller.
“You can go out and do levels, and you can modify, which means, if the skill is too hard, you can do a skill that may be a little bit easier so that you could still compete and do the routine,” she said. Her team set a goal of being able to do all levels without modification, and they did that. By the time the state championship was over, the Ozark Cheerleading team had completed all 18 levels with no modifications.
With their victory, Ozark became the first high school in Missouri to win a STUNT state championship because it was the first one. Keller and others hope STUNT will become an official MSHSAA sport soon. Right now, it’s considered “emerging.” She said, for it to become an official sport, there must be 50 teams, and, currently, there are 14. She’s hopeful it will grow over the next few years.
Universities and colleges are forming STUNT teams, including Missouri State University, which gives students, especially females, more opportunity for scholarships.
“If you’re a boy, you get great scholarship opportunities,” said Keller. “It’s kind of crazy how you can have a boy and a girl who can do the same things, but the boy is going to get offered bigger schools, more money, just bigger opportunities.”
She said, because STUNT is all female, it’s giving girls a chance to compete for bigger scholarships and bigger schools.
