Think you know KiKi Seth? There could be a few things about the tiny flyer from Elizabethtown that you don’t know as she took time to talk about cheerleading for the Lady Panthers and the other two sports that she loves to play.
KiKi Seth: I really got started in cheerleading when I was little and living with my parents in West Virginia. Ever since then I have been really interested when I came to Kentucky at the age of seven and I’ve been doing it ever since. I love it. I was a cheerleader in Virginia. I was on a Little League team. There were a few of the girls that cheered for the football teams and I was cheering for a team named the Cardinals. Between UK and UL I probably like Louisville the most. I enjoy everything about cheerleading that comes with it. You have the athletic ability that goes along with it. You have different people that will come off the mat with you and during competition and you can always add more to it. That’s what makes it different from any other team sport because you may have that standard position you play, but in cheerleading you may be required to do several other positions. Even though we have been to state cheer so many times, I still get nervous before we perform. I get dry-mouthed sometimes and could be shaking, but at the same time there is an energy going through my body and I love every minute of it.
I really enjoy cheerleading, but I also do play other sports. I’ve been playing volleyball for a long time and am a designated base runner on the softball team. I started playing during my middle-school years and have really been playing ever since on my JV team and started playing varsity this year. I play back row on the Elizabethtown volleyball team. I have for many years now, because of my height. If I was taller, I’d most likely be somewhere else and there really is an art to it. Being back there on the back row takes a lot of energy to play there. You want to be aggressive on every ball hit back there and make sure that you get back there as quick as possible. It’s your job to get there and you have to keep it in play like you are suppose to. Our back row defense really came together in the 5th Region Tournament and if really seemed like we did come together. At the beginning of the season, we were just really getting use to playing with each other (the volleyball lost a large senior class from the previous year) and how to pass the ball to each other from practicing together.
I really couldn’t be more proud of our team after this season to be able to conquer that at the end of the day. In some ways, volleyball and cheerleading are similar in that there is the team concept and I’ve been asked which was bigger to me: Winning the Region in Cheerleading or volleyball. I do believe that they are kind of different too because there are different difficulties on each level and because volleyball requires a different skill level for each player on the court and you have to bring it together and succeed as a team. Just like on the mat for cheerleading. Everyone has to be on point for that day to make it work perfectly because the judges are watching every single thing during a performance. My third sport is softball and I am a base-runner and an outfielder. Coach Mardis approached me about being a base-runner because of my speed so I gave it a try and I love it. When I first moved to Kentucky I was actually on a Peanut League with all guys, so it was a baseball team and I did it for maybe like two years and then I hadn’t done it afterward after Elementary school until my eighth-grade year was when I started again. After I graduate this season, I have actually decided to study and not continue my career in cheerleading at the moment, but maybe later on somewhere because the grades are most important to me. I have been accepted at the University of Louisville and will major in Criminal Justice and minor in Spanish and go towards the career field of an FBI agent like Mulder and Scully (X-Files). A little known fact about me is I like to sing a lot. I was actually in choir in Middle-school and then I focused on several other subjects. I sing a lot in the car.
