By Dijon Rolle
USAG Baden-Wuerttemberg Public Affairs

MANNHEIM, Germany - The final few days of February were intense for the 27 Department of Defense Dependents Schools Europe and six international schools competing in this year’s annual DoDDS-Europe basketball and cheerleading championships.

The atmosphere was electric and quite similar to that of the NCAA’s March Madness, only the high school version.

Teams from all over Europe spent a grueling four days competing in their respective divisions to capture top honors.

The final championship games were played Saturday in the Mannheim Sports Arena on Benjamin Franklin Village. The Mannheim community has hosted the DoDDS-Europe basketball championship games for several years running.

This year the Division III title went to the Rota boys who beat Sigonella 56-40, along with the Brussels girls who defeated Menwith Hill 26-22.

In Division II action, the Aviano boys defeated Hohenfels 49-38, repeating as Division II champs for the second straight year and the Bamberg girls beat Ansbach 35-30.

The Ramstein boys clenched the Division I crown, by beating Heidelberg  with a close win of 65-63 in the title game, while the Wiesbaden girls sealed their  title win with a 37-32 victory over Kaiserslautern. 
The energy was just as intense a few miles away in downtown Mannheim where the DoDDS-Europe cheerleading competition was held at an off-post facility.

Rota took first place honors in the Division III cheer competition with Sigonella and Incirlik rounding second and third place.

In Division II action, the Bitburg squad secured the top spot in front of second place Ansbach and third place Mannheim and in the Division I, Heidelberg  came in first place with Patch and Ramstein capturing second and third.

“It was a long process for us,” explained Leslie Hogue, head cheerleading couch for Heidelberg High.  “Because for the first time we had to recruit three football players that knew nothing about cheering, but after hours and hours of practice, we felt like we built the team we needed for this competition.” Hogue also added that the majority of the team was new and that this was a rebuilding year for the squad.
In addition to the many parents, friends, family and teachers from all over Europe, gathered in the stands to cheer for their favorite teams, many more were also glued to their television sets and computer screens around the world.

American Forces Network Europe aired the basketball games live on the Pentagon Channel and streamed the coverage on the internet for worldwide availability, for the first time ever.  They also assembled a team of broadcasters to provide play by play commentary during the action.

“It went very well”, said George Smith, AFN Europe Public Affairs Officer.

“We’re still counting, but as of last count, we had more than 600 emails from around the world saying thank you for putting the games on the Pentagon Channel and thank you for putting it on AFNEurope.net… It’s very unusual to get this much feedback, we had more positive feedback on it,  then we did even with our DoDDS high school football championship. ..I hope that the audience enjoyed it as much as AFN Europe enjoyed providing it to them,” he said.

While the network did not broadcast the DoDDS-Europe cheerleading competition live, Smith says they announced the winners during the basketball finals and showed lots of footage of the cheerleaders.