Coach Profile: Ashly Kershner
Eric Brown and Kaley Israels
November 13, 2009
Filed under Profiles, Sports
With all the major sports happening at the moment our goal is to go beyond the regular stories most of you already may know, and look into hidden and not regularly seen news. Well, in case you didn’t know, there is a new JV cheerleading coach this year, and get this… she is only 18 years old!
Meet Ashly Kershner, originally from Harper, a small town in Texas. Ashly recently transferred here to attend Calvary’s Oceans Edge School of Music, and in her free time she coaches the Junior Varsity cheerleading squad. Ashly started cheering when she was in sixth grade and hasn’t been able to put her poms poms down ever since. She has been in over fifteen competitions and has attended nationals twice, placing second one year, and third on another.
Although Ashly is the youngest coach at CCA, she’s a natural. When she cheered in high school, her competition coach offered her a coaching job as a freshman. Ashly explained, “It was pretty difficult to coach girls who were sophomores, juniors, and seniors when I was a freshman. They didn’t really always like the idea of a younger classmate telling them what to do, and a couple of them were my friends too!” Today, Ashly’s age doesn’t seem to affect her coaching at all, on the contrary, she sees it as bonus, because she can relate to the students much better.
Perhaps being a full time student at Ocean’s Edge and a coach part time could be overwhelming, but Ashly seems to be doing just fine, taking both tasks with ease. “It’s a gift from God that I’m here so I’ll make the best of it,” she says.