CLEARLAKE >> This evening, the annual Christmas Parade and Tree Lighting Ceremony in Clearlake will start at 6 p.m., from Redbud Park to Austin Park.
This year the Grand Marshals are current seniors Haylee Wade and Hoku-Lani Wickard from Lower Lake High School. Both students were chosen due to their great academic and athletic achievements.
Wade has been cheerleading for four years at Lower Lake High School. Her team recently qualified for the California State and the National cheer competitions this year. They will travel to Bakersfield for the state competition and Las Vegas for the National competition. Her team is working hard so that they can bring another national title back to our community in 2018. She was the runner up for the Cheerleader of the Year in Cheerleader magazine in 2015. Her competition cheer team just won first place in San Francisco at the Slam City cheer competition on December 2.
She has kept a 4.0 GPA throughout high school and plans on attending college where she would like to study nursing and sports medicine. Her institution of choice will depend on the cheer team per school as she has decided to continue her cheering career post-high school. She has already applied to several UC’s and Cal State colleges. Wade has also been in contact with colleges outside of California that offer athletic scholarships to cheerleaders as well.
A competition cheer team practices nearly year round. Getting a team ready to compete with the best high schools takes a lot of time and dedication. When not in practice, she spends her time either in the gym, studying or helping the youth cheer program with tumbling and choreographing their competition routines and mixing music to go along with them.
Wickard has maintained a GPA of 4.2 and is part of three sports: football, basketball and track-and-field. His main sport is Football and he plans on going to a four-year college to play on scholarship, of which he currently has three. His plan is to major in either Psychology or Sociology. Wickard has helped out with youth football and basketball in the community to teach kids that they must be good people as well as good athletes.
