By Paige Hayes
The crowd grows silent as the team takes their positions on the mat. The excitement and anxiety of the moment hangs heavy in the air.
For junior Alexa Bratton, all the sacrifice and hours spent practicing in the gym have finally paid off.
“We just need to believe that we got it and realize that we are meant to be out on this mat and give all our worries to God,” Bratton said.
Bratton is a junior on the Delta High School cheerleading team, where she competes as a main base. Over the last five years, the cheer team has won three state championships, winning the last two in back-to-back years.
In Indiana, there are 24 sports sanctioned by the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA), but cheerleading isn’t one of them. Because of this, an outside organization coordinates a state cheer competition, filling a void that many schools want to showcase their programs and celebrate their student-athletes.
However, just because the IHSAA doesn’t recognize cheer as a sanctioned sport doesn’t mean the state cheer competition is less competitive or stressful.
Bratton handles this pressure by staying confident in the routine and being in the right mindset.
“(You have to keep) reminding yourself that you are here for a reason, and you have what it takes (to win),” Bratton said.
In 1973, the IHSAA split the state football tournament into classes by school size to create a more level playing field. Since then, the IHSAA added girls’ volleyball, baseball, softball, boys’ and girls’ soccer, and boys’ and girls’ basketball to the multi-class tournament structure. Boys’ tennis, however, remains a one-class sport where smaller schools like Delta with fewer than 1,000 students compete against larger schools such as Carmel High School with nearly 5,500 students, to try to win a state championship.
During the 2025-26 season, however, junior Tyce Dishman and senior Aaron Elliott weren’t concerned about school size and statistics while competing in the number one doubles position for the boys’ varsity tennis team.
This duo made All-State doubles and were the first boys’ team to reach state doubles since 2020 for Delta.
Though the team itself did not qualify for the state finals, Dishman and Elliott soared through regionals and semi-state to make it to the first round of individual state finals.
Their record together this season was 19-3.
Dishman and Elliott got paired to play Culver Military Academy in the first round of the finals. Culver won the match, 6-1, 6-2.
The environment at state is tense. Every individual competing at this level has spent countless hours training and preparing for this opportunity.
“Indy schools, they don’t play tennis the way that we play tennis,” Dishman said. “They yell and they scream, so it was louder, but nothing that I haven’t seen before.”
Dishman and Elliott were confident going into this match with all the practice and work they had put in throughout the season.
The loss at state this season has motivated Dishman for his senior season.
“You never can be satisfied, and there’s always room to improve,” Dishman said. “I know where my game needs to be now, so I’m just going to work my tail off until I get to that point.”
But no matter the sport, and no matter the competition, everyone at state is hungry for a win.
In the 1980s, Delta wrestling dominated the state, winning five consecutive state championships in a single-class tournament system. As the sport has grown in both popularity and competition since then, Delta has continued this success, especially on the individual level.
Going into the wrestling team’s four-way Jay County tournament, senior Kaid Jackson found the preparation to be more difficult than usual.
“I had a hard cut (losing weight),” Jackson said. “That tournament was when our first cuts were, and our coaches put a lot of time into getting us better every day and just keeping us locked in for the season.”
Jackson spent most of his time in the pool to cut weight. Doing exercises in the pool due to the heat is one of the quickest and most effective ways to burn calories.
There’s never an off-season in wrestling. Jackson works around the clock to improve his skills, to better his chance of going to state again, and hopes to have a better outcome this year.
Jackson blocks out all of the noise in the intense environment, like at state.
The pressure going into Jackson’s season this year is immense, given that he made it to the state finals each of the last two years.
To make it to the state finals in any sport is no easy task. Percentage-wise, few athletes ever make it to this level. At Delta, though, state success comes down to three factors: preparation, work ethic, and dedication to their sport.
Junior Peyton Engle is another athlete who successfully made it to state. He competed in his first cross-country state finals this fall.
Engle has been working since sixth grade to accomplish this goal.
The wave of relief he got when it was announced that he was going to state this fall was indescribable.
He drove himself as hard as he could, collapsing over the finish line to qualify for state.
“I was very happy with my level of competitiveness and my place once I had completed the race,” Engle said.
“It was an amazing feeling knowing that I could not be upset with my race, no matter if I qualified or not, and I was honestly just insanely happy to be relieved of the pressure I had put on myself leading up to the race.“
Engle has set multiple long-term goals for himself ever since his freshman year, with those goals being to qualify for state, win at state at least once, and break the school record.
These goals have been his motivation throughout the season and have driven him to where he is now.
Delta’s success competing in the state finals across multiple sports isn’t something these athletes take for granted. While most student-athletes across the state never get to experience the thrill of state competition, Delta’s athletes stay grounded in the process.
“Stay confident and humble,” Bratton said. “(We) definitely need each other to accomplish this goal.”
