GPAC Cheer and Dance Championship(s) Saturday at Hastings

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(Hastings, Nebraska) – The Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) Cheer and Dance Championship(s), presented by Cypress Risk Management, are this Saturday, February 11, in Hastings, Nebraska, hosted by Hastings College.

This past fall the GPAC Council of Presidents announced the addition of Cheer and Dance as the league's 20^th and 21^st Championship Sports. For the last three seasons (since 2014) GPAC Cheer and Dance has had Invitational status within in the conference. Cheer and Dance became the newest GPAC Championship sports since wrestling was added in 2006-07.

Competition will begin on Saturday at Noon at Lynn Farrell Arena on the Hastings College campus.

This year the competition will consist of dance and stunt cheer. In the past there was also a non-stunt division, but all cheer teams are now stunt in the GPAC.

Teams will alternate through the competition with their dance and/or cheer routines.

Here is the competition schedule:

The awards ceremony will begin at 2:00pm after the completion of all the competition.

In 2016 Midland won the dance and stunt cheer titles, while Hastings was the non-stunt cheer champion. The 2016 event was held at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa.

The NAIA qualifying events will be held on February 24 or 25, 2017. The GPAC schools will be in the Northwest Grouping at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas, on February 24.

The 2017 season marks the first year the sport will conduct a NAIA National Championship. The NAIA is the only athletics association to offer a national championship in this sport. Competitive Cheer & Dance is the first to earn national championship status within the NAIA in a span of 22 years – NAIA Women's Golf became a championship sport prior to the spring of 1995.

The NAIA National Championship(s) will be in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, at Oklahoma City University on March 10-11, 2017.

About the Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC)

The Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) is an affiliated conference of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), consisting of 11 private, faith-based colleges and universities in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota. Originally founded in 1969 as the Nebraska Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (NIAC), the league retains four of the six charter members - Concordia, Doane, Hastings, and Midland.

In 1992, the NIAC added Northwestern and became the Nebraska-Iowa Athletic Conference. Eight years later, Dakota Wesleyan, Dordt, Mount Marty and Sioux Falls joined the conference which became the Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) in 2000-2001.

Briar Cliff entered the league in 2002-2003 and Morningside joined starting with the 2003-2004 school year. Both schools are in Sioux City, Iowa.

In the summer of 2010 Dana College ceased operations (Member from 1969-2010) and in 2011 The University of Sioux Falls discontinued membership in the GPAC (Member from 2000-2011). Nebraska Wesleyan discontinued membership in 2016 (Member from 1969-2016).

In 2015 the GPAC added College of Saint Mary in Omaha, Nebraska, as a member.

The University of Jamestown in Jamestown, North Dakota, will join the GPAC in 2018-19 as a new member. Jamestown will be an affiliate member for 2017-18 in cheer & dance and wrestling.

The GPAC sponsors 21 intercollegiate sports - nine for women, ten for men, and cheer & dance as a co-ed offering - and awards an All-Sports Trophy based on the final league standings and conference meet results at the end of each school year. Competitive Cheer and Dance is the most recently added championship sport in the GPAC (starting with 2016-17 after three years of invitational status).

Through the first 16 years as a conference the GPAC has 25 NAIA team National Champions.

First and foremost, the GPAC remains committed to Academic and Athletic Excellence! Last year 641 student-athletes from the conference earned Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athlete honors. In addition, 164 teams in the GPAC were honored as NAIA Scholar-teams.

Corey Westra of Sioux City, Iowa, is the GPAC Commissioner and Lucas Mohrman of Columbus, Nebraska, is the GPAC Assistant Commissioner for Sports Information.