Paige McCammon has tumbled and stunted her way to the NCAA Division I level.
Having participated in tumbling since she was 4 and cheerleading at the competitive level for a couple of years and then at Immanuel Lutheran School and Trinity Lutheran High School, the 18-year-old is taking the next high-flying step to the coed cheerleading team at Indiana University in Bloomington.
A reception recently was conducted at Trinity to celebrate the accomplishment.
“I’m just very thankful,” McCammon said. “I’m thankful for what I’ve learned here and all of the people that have supported me here and God and everything that I’ve gotten to this point. I just want to better myself and improve as much as I can, and it’s going to be a crazy experience. It’s very exciting.”
She started tumbling at a young age with a friend, and she said she advanced pretty quickly and stuck with it.
“I’ve always done that pretty much weekly since then,” she said. “I was just lucky that it came pretty naturally to me. I just picked stuff up quickly.”
She went to gyms in Scottsburg and Seymour before her coach, Steven Fackler, moved to GymTyme in Louisville, Kentucky. Then she transferred and regularly traveled there to work on her skills.
“He is great at tumbling. When he was tumbling, he won world competitions. He was very talented in gymnastics also,” McCammon said. “He had a cheer background and gymnastics, and he just taught me great form. That’s how my tumbling has gotten so good.”
Competitive cheerleading required a lot of time and money, so McCammon chose to focus on tumbling and school cheerleading. She tried cross-country, volleyball, track and field and basketball, but none suited her like cheerleading.
“Cheer really stuck,” she said. “It came to me easily, so I was like, ‘OK, this is fun.’ It’s so fun when you’re doing it. You don’t realize it just watching it. It looks crazy and you’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t know how they do that’ when you see flips and stunts, but when you’re really able to do it, it’s just a really cool feeling. When you work really hard for each skill … you’re trying to get skills and level up, and once you get something, it just is the best feeling. It’s like a rush.”
While tumbling in Louisville, an IU cheerleader, Matthias Ortiz, saw McCammon in action and encouraged her to come to Bloomington to stunt with his team.
“I went there and I was not even considering IU. I wanted to go to Purdue,” she said, smiling. “But I went and I was like, ‘I hadn’t really thought about it,’ but I loved it at IU. The people were so nice, and I picked it up pretty quickly.”
Last fall, she messaged Ortiz about pursuing trying out for IU’s coed squad, and he told her to come over for practices, and he was her tryout partner.
“After I stunted with him the first time, I was like, ‘This is fun,’” McCammon said. “I had never coed stunted before, and it was a completely different feeling, and I really wanted to learn it. I was like, ‘I’m going to do this. I want to do this.’”
McCammon had to submit a video before attending in-person tryouts April 30. That lasted 12 hours and included the school’s fight song, tumbling and stunting at Wilkinson Hall at IU.
An hour and a half after tryouts ended, the 200-plus candidates walked up to a door and hoped to see their number on the list of those who made the 2022-23 team.
McCammon was happy to see her number, 211, on the list. Only 12 girls and 13 boys made the team.
“I stood there and I was like, ‘Wait, what was my number again? I don’t remember.’ I called my mom and I was like, ‘211, right?’ because I took my sticker off in the car, and she was like, ‘Yeah, you’re 211,’ and I was like, ‘I made it.’ She started crying,” McCammon said.
Afterwards, McCammon joined the others who made the coed team for a meeting and the first practice.
“It was a long day,” she said. “It was intense, but it was fun.”
Her mother, Jennifer McCammon, agreed it was a long day but said it was worth it when she learned the results.
“I’m really proud of her,” Jennifer said. “She started tumbling when she was 4 years old, so she has a passion for tumbling. She has always wanted to cheer in college, but then she didn’t think about it until this year and got interested in coed. In my opinion, she always had the talent. Tumbling and stunting have always been easy to her.”
When she received the good news from her daughter, Jennifer said she screamed and yelled.
“It was kind of overwhelming,” she said. “When they sat down in the gym, the coach was like, ‘OK, I’m going to talk to you about things, but you’re going to retain about 20% of what you hear.’ It was pretty cool. (Paige) was so not confident she was going to make the team. I was pretty confident. Her coach was super confident she would make it. He has always told her that she could cheer in college. He was like, ‘You’ll make it.’”
Trinity coach Andrea Foster also was excited to hear the good news from Paige. At the time, she was out with some friends.
“She texted me. I was yelling, telling all of my girlfriends, ‘Oh my gosh! She made the team,’” Foster said. “I was so excited. I was so happy for her. It’s going to be great. It’s not only great for Paige, it’s great for the school.”
Since she started coaching Paige, Foster said she saw her capabilities.
“From Day 1, Paige had a lot of dedication,” Foster said. “She stayed after practice. She was going to open gyms at competitive gyms down in Louisville. She was stunting with kids from the IU team. She was always very interested. She was always like, ‘What can I do to make a college team?’ so I knew from Day 1, she was going to make the team.”
Given Paige’s commitment to tumbling, stunting and cheerleading over the years, Foster has confidence in her moving forward.
She looks forward to going to watch her cheer at IU football and basketball games and returning to Trinity to lead a cheerleading clinic.
“I’m super excited to watch her. I am a Purdue fan through and through, but she’ll get me to put on the IU shirt to come watch her one day, that’s for sure,” Foster said, smiling. “If they’re playing Purdue, I’ll have to wear a Purdue shirt, but I’ll write ‘Go Paige’ on the back or something. I am so happy for her. This will be a great experience. She’s a hard worker. She’ll do great.”
Paige is ready for what’s to come next school year, as she’ll be studying marketing at the Kelley School of Business along with cheerleading. Then she will have to try out again each year if she wants to continue cheering.
“It’s so exciting,” she said.