For just the third time in the past eight years, West Noble cheerleading celebrated one of its own leveling up to the college ranks.
West Noble senior Bella Barnes signed her National Letter of Intent this afternoon to commit to cheerleading at Huntington University.
“At first, I hadn’t planned on doing any cheerleading in my first year of college, but Huntington sent me a card around Christmastime, they wanted to meet with me,” started Barnes at her signing day Friday afternoon at West Noble High School. “They came and visited here on senior night, and it was there when I decided that, yeah, maybe I would like to do this in college.”
Barnes, surrounded by more than a dozen of her teammates, coaches and family, made it official. One of the happiest people at the ceremony was Huntington coach Shawnna Esque, who was happy Barnes responded to the initial callout, but was impressed by what she saw as the Charger cheerleaders performed.
“I came to the senior night and was interested to see what she looked like away from the videos she had sent,” Esque said. “I saw the skills she had and knew those would fit into what we needed, and offered her a spot. Was very happy she said yes.”
Added West Noble cheerleading coach Haley Whitney, “This is very exciting. She has earned it and worked very hard. She has shown that she truly loves the sport and has her entire career. It shows she can do this in college. She had a very positive experience here and glad she wants to continue that at Huntington.”
Whitney noted this was the first time in her eight years as coach that a college had reached out to her to do a live visit at an event.
Barnes added she is looking forward to incorporating the competitive cheerleading aspect in college, a discipline West Noble didn’t have a lot of experience doing. Add in a couple of injuries in her early cheerleading days, and Barnes is ready for a new set of challenges.
“I actually fractured bones in my hand during basketball season this year, so I’m ready to get back into that competition mode again.”
Academically, Barnes is looking to get into an animation major, which includes all facets of the genre such as storyboarding, graphic arts, digital animation and computer animation.