Salina ? Cheerleaders at Salina’s two high schools will be keeping their spirit at home this year.

The Salina School District eliminated its travel fund for cheerleaders as part of more than $191,000 in athletic cuts approved this spring.

Like Salina, cheerleading squads from across the state are falling prey to budget cuts, said Tricia Norris, a sales representative for Wichita’s Varsity Spirit fashions, which works with nearly 400 cheer and dance squads from Kansas high schools, junior highs and colleges.

She said that during the past year she’s seen many high schools cut budgets by slicing their cheer squads in half. She said squads were dropping from 12 or 14 members to 8 or 10, so travel requires only one vehicle.

In Salina, cheerleading wasn’t the only program affected by cuts. The district has reduced its travel budget by $9,500 by also eliminating sophomore boys basketball, freshman boys and girls B team basketball, and freshman B team volleyball.

District officials emphasize the reductions were made across the board to affect the least number of participants and avoid completely dropping any program.

“We’re not discontinuing cheerleading,” Supt. Gary Norris said. “They’re not going to as many events.”

But the explanation provided little comfort to Lindsey Elliott. The Salina South High School cheerleading captain said she and the squad members knew a year ago money was tight. The cheerleaders had four fund-raisers instead of the usual two.

“We were willing to fund everything, and then we found out we can’t even travel with our own money,” Elliot said. “It’s my senior year. I want to go to games and support our team. Now, it feels like we can’t even do that.”

Jim Campion, the athletic director of Salina Central High School, said allowing cheerleaders to raise their own money for travel or letting parents drive the cheerleaders would lead to more issues.

“We’ve made several different cuts where I’m sure parents would gladly chip in money,” Campion said. “If we allow the cheerleaders’ parents to raise the money, you’d get into other programs where parents couldn’t do that, and then that program would suffer. You have to draw the line somewhere.”