On February 4, Linganore High School (LHS) senior Leah Doornink signed her National Letter of Intent to continue her cheerleading career at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas.
Doornink began cheering over seven years ago, having been convinced to try out the sport by her parents who had met through it.
Prior to competing for a school team, Doornink learned the basics of cheerleading through competing in the Allstar Cheer program, PCS Allstars in Virginia. From her time in the cheerleading gym and tumbling in her backyard, Doornink began building her foundation toward becoming a champion athlete.
Doornink’s experience with LHS cheer is one for the history books. After making JV at the beginning of her freshman year, Doornink was promptly moved up to varsity in the same season, upon proving her competition experience.
Alongside the rest of the Linganore cheer team, Doornink made history by winning the title of back-to-back-to-back Grand State Champions. This means Linganore earned the highest score of any cheer team across all divisions in the Maryland State Championship. Doornink helped lead the team to this accomplishment, especially during her senior year as a captain of the varsity team.
According to LHS cheerleading’s Head Coach, Amy Rumburg, Doornink continuously pushes herself to be her very best both on and off the competition mat.
“Her dedication, her drive and her kindness is going to take her so very far in life,” Rumburg said.
While many high school athletes must balance their sport and academics, Doornink does this while also competing on a World’s level cheer team.
According to Doornink’s mom, Dana Doornink, supporting her daughter’s athletic journey with various teams while also promoting her academics could, at times, be challenging.
“It [cheerleading] was a huge commitment for our family time,” Dana Doornink said. “Just managing the house and making sure she was where she needed to be could be difficult.”
Despite the challenges, Leah Doornink knew that she wanted to eventually compete at the collegiate level for a majority of her life. She began her preparations by going to a number of clinics hosted by various college cheer teams.
“The clinics are mainly to get an idea of certain colleges and how they run things,” Doornink said. “[They allow you to see] what skills you need to focus on gaining and [provide] knowledge about those teams, so that you have a higher chance of making [the teams] for tryouts.”
Despite her participation in multiple clinics with the intent on finding her college home, Doornink ended up finding her dream school in an unconventional manner.
“[I chose Pittsburg State University] really out of the blue on social media,” said Leah Doornink. “I saw something online, and then I visited there, and it just had everything I wanted [in a college].”
Doornink will pursue a career in nursing through Pittsburg State University’s Army Nursing Center of Excellence program, a title given to the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) nursing program due to their outstanding faculty and commissioned nurses.
According to Doornink, while she will miss Linganore’s cheer program, it has helped shape her into the collegiate athlete she hopes to be.
“[Competing with Linganore] definitely gave me that team aspect, not to mention the sideline aspect, since you can’t gain that from Allstar [cheer] gyms,” Doornink said.
Rumburg believes that Pittsburg is gaining an excellent athlete and shared that Doornink will be missed at Linganore.
“She’s going to do amazing things, and I’m super excited to see what this next chapter brings for her,” Rumburg said.
