PINE BUSH – The new economy will take us by surprise. Take this latest example accessed from a road cut off Route 52, at the eastern end of the Pine Bush hamlet. Rough new gravel and — whoah! — a very large new building amidst the trees. And yes, this building is in its own way a factory, although instead of making widgets this one is training young people to become top class Cheer athletes.

Cheer? Yes, that's what cheerleading has evolved into. The old dance routines by pretty girls on the sidelines has become a rigorous, gymnastics-oriented sport of high energy tumbling, acrobatics and pyramid building with its own rules, games, injuries, pain, and triumphs.

And now New York State has recognized Cheer as an official school sport.

The Quest Cheer building, all 8,100 square feet of it, is also a testament to one woman's intense competitive drive. Cherie Walker-Ramsey, who was a gymnast herself, and who ran a gym school combined with a fitness center and dance school for ten years in East Brunswick, NJ, has brought all those skills with her to Pine Bush when she moved here more than fifteen years ago.

Walker-Ramsey began dreaming of this development during her first season as Pine Bush High School's cheerleader coach in 2001.

"I was hired by Pine Bush for Cheer, and when the seasons ended for football and basketball, that left me with the girls who needed something to continue with in their sport," she recently explained of her decade and a half's drive. "I looked into competitive Cheer, and that's when I began Quest. We had twelve kids, including two of my own, and we rented Memorial Hall from the Methodist Church two days a week."

There, with her previous experience in New Jersey, Walker-Ramsey quickly got an idea about what she was aiming for ultimately.

"I had all that experience in the back of my head, and when the time came I understood how to put a gym together," she continued. "I researched what the top gyms for Cheer use for equipment, everything."

That research including a 16 by 18 foot pit filled with foam blocks, to the tune of $3,500.

Walker-Ramsey laughs when I mention that pit and what fills it.

"When they arrived I thought they'd sent way too many. It was enormous. I thought we'd have lots of packs left over," she said. "But as we opened them and dumped them in, we found they knew what they were doing and we have just what we needed."

The pit provided a lot of conversation as the building was constructed.

"I had to do a lot of explaining with the architects," she explained. "At every stage of the construction of the pit there was a lot of long explanations."

Now, that jump pit is just one small corner of a facility which boasts a huge soft floor for tumblers to pull off amazing acrobatic routines, as well as a separate space for other training with a tumble track and a "dead" floor. In addition, the building has two smaller spaces that have been rented by Pine Bush Sweat Lab, a Crossfit gym, and Pine Bush Karate, which moved there from its previous quarters in a center hamlet building.

In her tenure at Pine Bush High School, Cherie Ramsey-Walker's teams have dominated Section IX competitively, and demonstrated the benefits of year round work and competition. Now, she notes, "I have kids coming here from Cornwall, from Monroe and Washingtonville, from Port Jervis, and even from Schenectady. And what we're seeing is that these kids are taking the skills back to their school teams with them so the overall quality of the section is rising."

To that end she adds how she has David Kogut, a five times world champion from the Top Gun All Stars, now in charge of training her top Quest teams. And Ramsey-Walker has become chair for Section IX Cheerleading, while also sitting on the ad hoc committee to create guidelines for the new sport. Plus, after pulling her own equipment out of the high school for her private facility, the Pine Bush School District has decided to add in its own Cheer mats and other needed materials.

"We gave a presentation to New York State Education, and last November they agreed to make Cheer an official sport in the state," she proclaims.

Last year, Walker-Ramsey came to the Crawford planning board with her plans and began the process that led to approvals, the planting of lots of trees to keep the state happy, and then the swift construction of the new building.

"The town was very welcoming from the beginning of the process. And we went with local businesses as much as we possibly could," she says. "RHE Electric were phenomenal, and Dougherty Concrete just wonderful. Bruce from Fine Design... oh, what the heck of a wonderful man; a fountain of information and guidance for us. And now my sign is being done by PDQ printing in the Valley Supreme!"

Meanwhile Crawford supervisor Charles Carnes, who used to concentrate on "rateable businesses" coming in to help the local economy, says he never ever quite imagined one like this.

"We really welcome them to the town. Congratulations to Cherie Ramsey, it's a really great thing to see this," he said in a recent interview. "I know that the Cheer community here is well established and has been looking forward to seeing this for a long time... and this fits with the way our towns can attract new people. Fitness, exercise, the outdoors: these are the things we are going to offer. So see you at the grand opening in September."