For years I’ve heard the argument, “Cheerleading isn’t a sport.” This is, of course, ridiculous. When I worked in Birmingham, on Friday nights I did live work on TV at high school football games. One of the most prominent teams there (and in the nation, they had their own reality show) at the time was Hoover High School. I was there for game one. Their cheerleaders were beautiful and 100% healthy. I was also there for the last game of the season when their cheerleaders looked worse for wear than the football team. Knee braces and splints were as prevalent as smiles on the squad. The wear and tear of modern cheerleading is no joke. And that statement was unfortunately further punctuated this weekend.
Keianna Joe is a resident of Hartnett County. She is a seventeen-year-old member of a competitive cheerleading squad. According to WRAL, Keianna was warming up for a competition this past weekend in Broughton when she went into cardiac arrest. As others around her were understandably in panic mode around the unresponsive Keianna, her mother, Andrea Joe, lept into action, performing CPR on her daughter. “I had done two sets of compressions and breaths,” she said. “I had looked over and toward my left side, and I finally saw that the AED machine had arrived.”
Andrea then used the portable defibrillator to shock her daughter’s heart back, and continued CPR until paramedics arrived. Keianna survived and is now recovering at Duke Medical Center. How about a cheer for Andrea Joe. Not too many moms can say their gave their daughter life…twice!
These Are The 25 Best High Schools For Athletes In North Carolina
Choosing the right school for your child can feel like the most important decision in the world. It’s a factor in where you purchase a home. Should you shell out the big bucks for private school education? How can you set your child up for success? So many parents stress about these decisions for years and years. And when your child is an athlete, regardless of it they are looking to play in college, that makes the decision that much harder. If your child has the potential to be a college athlete and potentially get a scholarship, you want to make sure they are in the best place possible to develop their skills and get noticed. Even if they are in it for fun, you still want them to have good coaches, and facilities and winning is nice too! How do you know the best High Schools for athletes in the state of North Carolina? Of course, you can look at the success of a specific team or program. State championships and players signed to college programs are certainly a reflection.
But we want to help you narrow it down. And Niche.com is here to help with rankings of schools and universities across the country. They recently released their 2023 rankings of schools. This includes K-12 as well as higher education. You can play around with the filters and view the rankings based on a variety of factors. One of those is a listing of the best high schools in for athletes in North Carolina. Which schools topped the list? Let’s find out.
For this list, we are including public, private, and charter schools. And the overwhelming majority are actually public schools! Though the top 2 are private with one being in Charlotte. But where did these rankings come from you may ask? According to Niche:
Explore the best high school sports programs based on rigorous analysis of key statistics and millions of reviews from students and parents using data from the U.S. Department of Education. Ranking based on student and parent reviews of athletics, number of state championships, student participation in athletics, and the number of sports offered at the school. Compare the best high school sports programs in your area. Read more on how this ranking was calculated.
If you’re looking for the best school to send your athlete to hopefully this list will help you narrow it down. These are the 25 best schools in North Carolina for athletes.
