Brookville cheerleaders triumph over tragedy

Allie McCormick knelt down on the interstate next to her unconscious teammate.

Nikki Walton had just been thrown from their vehicle in an accident while returning home from King’s Dominion. She lay on the pavement, bleeding. Nearby, Kiley Barley, also unconscious, sat pinned inside the wreck.

The July 29 car accident, which sent three Brookville High School cheerleaders to UVa Medical Center, marked the beginning of a competitive cheerleading season marred by serious squad-member injuries.

But McCormick’s vigil at Walton’s side also marked the beginning of something else, a heightened emotional bond and spirit of teamwork among the girls. That’s what coach Amanda Dean credits with the team’s unprecedented success —including invitational and district wins, along with a second-place finish at regionals and a sixth-place finish at the state championships.

“A lot of times, you deal with people in it for themselves, wanting to be front and center,” Dean said. “We didn’t have that this year.”

The night of the accident, Dean and several teammates gathered at the home of Ann Barley, mother of cheer captain Kiley Barley and former BHS cheerleader Kalen Barley, who also was in the wreck.

Ann Barley said that as the details came in, those assembled sent out calls and text messages to other teammates and to football players.The accident happened on Interstate 64 in Louisa County. Their car, with Kiley Barley in the driver’s seat, had drifted onto the left shoulder, state police said. As Barley moved the car back onto the road, she overcorrected and collided with another car.

Allie McCormick was scratched up and had glass in her foot but was otherwise fine. Kalen Barley, who graduated from BHS in June, had a broken shin. Walton suffered a lacerated spleen and punctured lung, as well as three broken ribs, a shattered elbow and other injuries. Kiley Barley, pinned to her seat by her air bag, suffered a concussion, ruptured spleen, punctured lung and three broken ribs, plus two broken bones in her back. The driver of the other car, state police records say, was not injured.

Dean said that it took a while before her thoughts went from immediate concern for the injured girls to wondering about the season. McCormick and Barley, both seniors, and Walton, a junior, were all veteran members of her team.

McCormick wasn’t able to try out because of the short-term injury to her foot, but Dean gave her a place on the team, based on past performance.

Walton’s doctor warned her against tumbling, saying a fall could mean disastrous re-injury to her elbow.

She spent a couple of months as a member of the squad, supporting her teammates from the sidelines but eventually decided that she had to quit for emotional reasons.

“I couldn’t take sitting there,” Walton said. “It was just something I had done since I was 3, and then I couldn’t do it anymore.”

KileyBarley remained cheer captain, even though her doctor told her not to compete for at least three months following the accident.

“She was basically like our sideline cheerleader,” McCormick said. “We felt like we owed it to her, to keep the squad the way it should have been and not let anything get in the way of reaching our goal.”

As in other years, Dean and the cheerleaders set their sights on winning the district championship, which the school had not won since its only previous district victory in 2002.

The goal seemed unattainable, though, especially as more injuries followed.

First, Kandace Krantz dislocated her elbow. Then, Jordan Curry strained her hip flexor. Camden Canfield was removed from competition when it was thought she had a compression fracture.

In her five years of coaching Brookville cheerleading, Dean had never before had to use a single alternate. This season, she used four.

And Kiley Barley ended up as one of them, about midway through the season.

McCormick, Barley and Dean all remember the pandemonium that ensued when Dean announced Barley would be competing again. Some girls cried, some screamed and several jumped all over Barley.

For many of her teammates, Barley’s return was a symbol of the fighting spirit the team sustained throughout the season.

“I think some people doubted us,” McCormick said. “We triumphed through tragedy.”