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Cheerleader performs solo after team quits before state championships

Solo FILE PHOTO: A cheerleader didn't let her teammates' quitting stop her from competing. She performed solo. (Tomaz Levstek/Getty Images)

They were a small but mighty team that got much, much smaller, but that didn’t stop one cheerleader from competing at her state’s championship.

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The four-person squad from Morrill High School was scheduled to compete at the Nebraska state cheer competition earlier this month, KLKN reported.

But when three of her teammates quit, Katrina Kohel didn’t let that stop her.

She took the mat — alone.

Kohel said she didn’t ever consider hanging up her pom poms and uniform, despite her coach asking several times if she still wanted to cheer.

Kohel is 17 and is a senior. She has been a member of the Morrill High School team for the whole time she attended the school and had been to the competition twice before, The Grand Island Independent reported.

She was the only senior with three freshmen on the squad, all of whom quit for what was said to be personal reasons the week before the competition.

So, despite the speedbump in her cheer career, Kohel and her coach, April Ott, reworked the routine from a quad to a solo set.

“She was so gung-ho about it, working really hard to revamp everything,” Ott told the Independent. “I’m so proud of the work she did and how she was able to do the routine.”

Kohel took the floor by herself but she wasn’t alone. The stands were packed with family, friends and even other teams who were cheering her on.

In the end, competing solo wasn’t that bad.

“I only had to worry about myself,” Kohel told the Independent. “I didn’t have to worry about other people messing up, but only about if I was in line with the music.”

Kohel placed eighth out of 12 and earned 77 of 100 possible points.

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