Zoi Kennedy’s passion for cheer started before she even started school.
Her first exposure was when her family went to watch her older brothers play sports.
“When I would go to their games, I would see the cheerleaders, and I wanted to do it,” she said. “The reason why I enjoyed the games so much was watching the cheerleaders.”
For some, Zoi’s physical limitations might seem to make her dreams of cheering an impossibility.
“We have always told her she can do whatever she wants, she was just going to have to do it differently,” said Chelsey Kennedy, Zoi’s mother.
Zoi’s potential obstacle to being a cheerleader is that she was born with spina bifida, a condition that stops the spine and the muscles around it from fully forming, often leaving a hole. The effects on physical ability can range. In Zoi’s case, she needs a wheelchair for mobility.
“When I was born, I had a hole in my back,” Zoi said. “I don’t have muscle; I don’t feel from my waist down.”
So when Zoi expressed the desire to cheer, Chelsey, unfamiliar with the cheer community, set out to see what could be done. She found a welcoming group in Box Elder, Utah where they lived until last summer.
“We had people come to us and tell us she can do this, and they will make it work for her,” Chelsey said. “Everyone knew us, and they were willing to make it work for her.”
Zoi started with mini cheer and mini drill, cheerleading and drill teams for youths four to eight years old. The 16-year-old continued to cheer as part of her middle school and high school cheer teams in Box Elder. Moving to Dayton after her sophomore year, Zoi was welcomed to the West Side High School Cheer Team by its new coach, Shelbie Alpaugh.
Alpaugh cheered for West Side, graduating in 2012. She took over as cheer coach at the start of the 2025-26 school year and found out last summer that Zoi would be starting at West Side in the fall and was interested in joining the cheer team.
She admits she has never seen anyone in a wheelchair who was part of a cheer team before.
“At first I asked myself how this is going to work,” Alpaugh said. “Then I thought, this is a perfect opportunity for us to grow and to learn from her.”
As everything began to fall in place, Alpaugh realized she had a gem in Zoi.
“She is strong, and she is willing to put in the work,” she said. “She is really sharp with her motions, and she has really good facials. We have put her in some stunts, and she is really good with those.”
Zoi said one of those stunts she was central to was used whenever the Pirates Football team scored a touchdown.
But as she was putting the team together last summer, Alpaugh also realized that she had a cheerleader in Zoi, who had the experience she needed to take West Side cheer back to the competition-oriented program that it used to be.
“The last year West Side competed in cheer was 2012,” Alpaugh said. “Zoi competed with her Utah school so she was one of the few on the team who had that experience.”
Zoi said she and Alpaugh spoke at length last summer.
“Shelbie is awesome. She got in contact with me before I moved up here and got to know me,” Zoi said. “If there is anything I can’t do, she always asks me what I would like to do during those parts.”
There are 15 girls and two boys on the West Side cheer team and Alpaugh said they have all worked to incorporate Zoi.
“Sometimes they make up something specifically for me,” Zoi said. “Sometimes I just do whatever; I dance with them and I do a cheer.”
While cheer is her passion, Zoi is far from one dimensional. She is a great student who served on her student council in middle school and is currently running a campaign for West Side’s student body president for next year. As she starts to look toward her senior year in high school, she is also contemplating the next phase of her academic life.
“Right now I want to either be an architect or a doctor or nurse that works with babies,” she said.