CLAYSBURG - The call might come this week, with Claysburg-Kimmel school board members given 24 hours' notice to attend a "special meeting."
Their mission: to pick a new cheerleading coach in time for the season's first football game.
They have seven days.
"The kids don't have a program," said John Burket, Claysburg-Kimmel school board president. "I feel sorry for them."
The district's cheerleading program is on hold, with no one in charge and the 26 girls scheduling their own practices in preparation for their opening game Aug. 31 against Williamsburg.
"I'm expecting a full cheerleading program" in time for the game, Superintendent Royce Boyd said.
The problems began in early summer, when the junior-high and varsity cheerleading coaches' positions were reopened - a move Burket said is standard procedure in extracurricular activities.
Teresa Medasie, a Claysburg-Kimmel cheerleading alumna and the team's coach for three years, reapplied along with two other candidates. No one involved could say how much the part-time position pays.
The school board instead settled on Jamie Claycomb, also a district alumna. Claycomb's tenure was cut short - she lasted less than a week, by some accounts - after administrators learned of apparently questionable photos on her Facebook page. She resigned soon after, her time in the job so brief that she never met with the cheerleaders, Boyd said.
Claycomb did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.
With the summer workout season approaching and the squad without a leader, administrators asked Medasie to serve as acting coach until, as she claims, she could be rehired at an August board meeting.
"I had to do a lot of soul-searching on that one, because I'd been passed over," she said. "But I told the girls that's what I'm there for."
At the Aug. 8 meeting when she'd expected to be hired, Medasie instead faced accusations going back years, some apparently from parents with whom she'd had private disputes.
"It's more the adults than it is the kids," Burket said, putting the issue down to "personal vendettas."
Parents accused Medasie of berating and abandoning girls after practices. An audience member reminded the board that she'd once been reprimanded for advising a worried squad member to take a pregnancy test.
In the end, the board tabled her hiring for the part-time position and Boyd announced the program's suspension.
"It's pretty minuscule," Burket said, complaining that the hour-long debate eclipsed serious academic matters. "The majority of the time we pay our administrators for is spent on these penny-ante issues."
After the suspension, the cheerleaders scheduled practices themselves and performed at Claysburg Community Days, Medasie said.
Recognizing the need to secure a coach in time for football season, Boyd said administrators are already reviewing eight fresh applications.
Medasie acknowledged that hers is among them.
"They know I'm a good coach," she said.
Boyd and Burket said they're confident that a choice will be made in time, even if it requires an emergency board meeting.
"In small towns like Claysburg, where everyone knows everyone else, it's challenging at times to make decisions and make everyone happy," Burket said.
Medasie put it more simply.
"It's a catty town," she said.
Mirror Staff Writer Ryan Brown is at 946-7457.
