Morningside cheer’s path pays off with national championship

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Even a few weeks after its national championship, the Morningside University competitive cheer squad is still soaking it all in.

The Mustangs on April 11 won the Intermediate Small Coed NAIA division championship with two strong performances, closing out a season of challenges and tough decisions that ultimately proved to be the right ones.

"I wholeheartedly believed in this group," head coach Maci Ohm '18 said. "So it's been a really full-circle moment for me. It still feels pretty surreal being an athlete and now a coach here. It just feels super full circle. For me, it's everything to see the smiles and them repping these NCA (champion) jackets that everybody wants to wear."

Morningside turned in a score of 86.1481 to take first in the qualifying round. The division emphasizes technique, synchronization, and clean execution with a limited number of coed athletes.

The Mustangs delivered again in the finals, posting an 87.3704 to finish atop the leaderboard and secure the title. The weekend in Daytona Beach, Florida, was the culmination of a season filled with challenges.

When they arrived in Florida, the Mustangs planned to practice outdoors but inclement weather forced them inside. The schedule also shifted, pushing competition back to Friday and Saturday after originally being slated for Thursday prelims and Friday finals.

Morningside didn't let it faze them. Ohm watched Friday's warm-ups and knew her team was ready for the moment.

"The mindset was really just let's leave it all out on the mat. I really believe they did that," Ohm said. "The goal was to hit a hit-zero routine. It's pretty uncommon to get zero deductions at NCA just because of the nerves, and they did that."

The Mustangs built a six-point lead in prelims and carried that momentum into the finals.

"I think we went into NCA really confident because we had so much trust in each other and love for each other," senior Amber Hofmeister said. "But it was also kind of a toss-up of what was going to happen because we'd never been there. I think it just showed that we worked hard, put everything out there and it won us a championship."

In the fall, Ohm made the decision to bypass the NAIA championship season and instead compete at NCA, where she believed scoring would be more objective.

"It was a new resource for us to use to see how capable our team was," Ohm said. "I felt like giving NCA a chance where it was completely unbiased. You have no idea what teams get bids to go out there."

The conversations leading up to that decision were difficult. Ohm wasn't afraid to approach Vice President of Intercollegiate Athletics Jim Sykes and President Chad Benson about charting a different path to give the Mustangs the best opportunity to succeed.

Even through those talks, the trust between coach and team never wavered.

"Maci saw something special in us. She had that belief in us, and we had to trust that we could see it in ourselves, too," Hofmeister said.

Even without much time to reflect, Ohm still remembers the email that started it all. When the competitive cheer position opened ahead of the 2022–23 academic year, she didn't wait. Before the job was even posted publicly, she reached out to Sykes. Years later, she still has that email saved as a reminder of the moment she went all in.

"I haven't looked back," Ohm said. "I felt it was truly where I was meant to be. It wasn't a scary process because I was so confident in my abilities and the fact that this was where I was supposed to be."

What started with a simple email has turned into a championship standard that continues to push Morningside athletics forward on the national stage.