SUMRALL, Miss.—Sumrall High School senior Camden Dedeaux and the three other cheerleaders beside her locked their arms to form a base before flipping and lifting their designated flyer, who raised her arms into a Y position. As the backspot for this stunt, Dedeaux steadied the flyer’s ankles from behind, and the base held her several feet from the ground. Two groups of cheerleaders also adorned in pearl-white uniforms featuring sapphire sleeves and the school’s golden bobcat mascot pivoted and carried their own flyers toward the center.
Once they were within arm’s reach, the central flyer dropped. Her teammates grabbed her by the torso and again flipped her forward. Dedeaux spotted her flyer as the flyers from either side used the momentum from this flip to propel the central cheerleader upward into the liberty: a precarious, one-legged raise to cap off SHS’ performance at the 2022 Universal Cheer Association’s High School Nationals Competition inside the VISA Athletic Center in Orlando, Fla.
Soon after their routine, the competition’s judges announced that—despite holding a tight lead for much of the competition—SHS had earned sixth place with only a 6.2-point difference between its and the first-place team’s scores. Camden’s mother Mandy Dedeaux looked for her daughter amongst the 23 girls who walked in her direction after the competition’s conclusion. She stood in a crowd of other parents who, with a mix of both pride and sympathy, had just collectively held their breaths as the announcer revealed the day’s final scores.
Mandy spotted Camden, whose eyes were glistening with tears, and the two embraced as Camden began to cry on her mother’s shoulder.
“She got her feelings hurt so easily over everything,” Mandy Deudeux said of her daughter. “She just had a big heart.”
This moment was the last time Mandy remembers hugging her daughter. On Feb. 23, 2022, about a week and a half after the UCA High School Nationals, Camden Dedeaux was fatally injured in an automobile accident while driving on Highway 49.
Today, Mandy Dedeaux keeps her daughter’s legacy going through The Camden Dedeaux Foundation, a nonprofit that has awarded thousands of dollars to Lamar County high-school seniors and cheerleaders in the two short years since Camden’s death.
‘They Looked Up to Her’
The foundation recently held the Love Like Cam 5k, a color run wherein more than 300 people of all ages lined up under a bright pink arch outside of Sumrall Elementary School to raise money in memory of Camden Dedeaux. As runners finished their races and passed back through the starting arch, volunteers sprayed them with bright-colored powders and turned their white shirts into mixes of yellow, pink and emerald green.
“We were very pleased with the turnout,” Mandy Dedeaux said of the 5k’s attendance, which doubled her initial estimation of 150 people. “Three hundred people—that’s crazy. Everyone had fun. I loved seeing everybody have a good time.”
In all, the 300 runners who attended the Love Like Cam 5k on Aug. 3 raised around $10,000 for the foundation after the event’s initial expenses. Many participated because Camden had left a lasting effect on their lives. Ashton Sumrall, a community member who brought her children to participate in the event’s “Fun Run,” spoke to the influence Camden had on her family.
“She was a big part of our community,” Sumrall told the Mississippi Free Press at the fundraiser. “We have two young kids that cheer, and Cam was a big part of that. She helped with our cheer squad, and they looked up to her, and she was a great role model for all our young kids and community. We just want to be here to remember her and support.”
The money accrued as a result of this race will directly contribute to the funds for The Camden Dedeaux Foundation’s several scholarships. Each year, the foundation awards $1,000 scholarships to Lamar County seniors and a $1,000 scholarship to a cheerleader who attends The Camden Classic, an annual cheerleading exhibition that featured more than 20 schools from the southeast United States last year. So far, the foundation has awarded 11 scholarships, Mandy Dedeaux. When selecting recipients, Dedeaux and other foundation members look for applicants who “possess qualities of Camden.”
“They have to be nice, well-liked people who have a passion for their school, for their friends, and for what they do,” Dedeaux said. “They have to treat others like Camden treated others. They have to stand out for the right reasons.”
‘She Shined’
Those who knew Camden Dedeaux in life often remember her as someone with a big and sensitive heart—someone who, even at her own expense, was always kind to others. Kim Blount, Dedeaux’s cheer coach and a teacher who has worked at Sumrall High School for 28 years, remembers Camden as someone who would “cry over the smallest thing.” But even when she was sad, Dedeaux’s tears would always lead to a smile.
“She would be upset about the smallest thing, and we would just make light of it, and she would end up laughing with us,” Blount told the Mississippi Free Press. “It would just turn into one of those kinds of moments.”
Blount recounted a time when one of her cheerleaders had forgotten their fleece jacket, a necessity for the football season’s chilly late-autumn nights. After lending her own jacket to the friend who had forgotten hers, Camden began to cry.
‘“She did not have her fleece jacket, but the entire team had their fleece jacket, and it was a little chilly,” the coach recalled. “It wasn’t really cold yet, but she was crying hysterically, and I was like, ‘Camden, what is wrong with you?’ She said she had given hers to somebody else because they had left theirs.”
“Her mom comes down, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know what to do with her; she’s crying over this fleece,’” Blount continued. “(Mandy Dedeaux) was like, ‘Camden, why are you so emotional over this?’ and Camden just cried until (her sobs) just turned into laughter.”
As a member of the Sumrall High School cheer squad, Camden Dedeaux had a passion for cheer and brought a lot of love to the sport and her team.
“It was her favorite thing to do on Earth,” Dedeaux said of Camden’s relationship with cheerleading. “That was her second family.”
Camden was a backspot on the Sumrall High School cheer squad, an integral position that provides stability and spots cheerleaders who engage in stunts. While Camden was competent in this supportive role, her coach Kim Blount said that where Camden really excelled was at pep rallies and on football field sidelines, places where she could showcase her personality and interact with the crowd.
“To this day, I still use her as an example for Friday night rallies and getting the crowd pumped up, because she was always shining,” Blount said. “She was excited to be on the sidelines. She was happy, she was peppy, she was trying to get the crowd engaged, and she did really well on the sidelines; she shined there.”
‘She Was With Us Every Moment’
Kendall Eades, Camden Dedeaux’s friend who was a couple grades below her while they were on the cheer team together, remembered Dedeaux as being different from the stereotypical senior cheerleader. As with many other high-school sports, seniority is a major part of the Sumrall High School cheer team; junior students organize pre-game events and hangouts for the squad, and seniors are the team’s captains. Eades and their friends thus felt a little distant from many of these student leaders, some of whom could be demanding toward younger students. Dedeaux, however, expressed leadership using other methods.
“Camden was always wanting unity,” Eades said. “She would always tell everybody to be happy and nice, and she really wasn’t big on like, ‘I’m a senior, so I’m gonna make the people below me do this.’ She was always, ‘Let’s just all do it together. Let’s just do the best we can.”’
At their first cheer practice of their freshman year, Dedeaux invited Eades and her friend Taylor Davis to get ready together for a football game later that day. Eades and Davis—who, at the time, were nervous about acclimating to their new high-school lives—said Camden made them feel at home with the Sumrall High School cheer squad.
“She wanted us to feel included,” Eades said. “She wanted us to be comfortable on the cheer team, and she was just so good at making everyone feel like they had a place where they belonged.”
This welcoming behavior was common for Dedeaux. Many of the cheerleaders who were underclassmen when Dedeaux was a senior cited her as being the first upperclassman to intentionally include them in group activities. Davis recalled her first media day—a day where the squad takes photos with one another for competitions or similar events—as a cheerleader at Sumrall High School as one of these instances.
“She was the only senior that asked us to take pictures with her,” Davis told the Mississippi Free Press.
Kim Blount, who has coached the Sumrall High School cheer squad for 25 years, noted that Dedeaux’s class of cheerleaders was one that she bonded with unusually fast.
“We were close since they made the team,” Blount said. “As freshmen, that whole group, we just bonded really soon, and normally it takes me a couple of years. Looking back, I realized that they were always close to one another.”
Camden’s mother Mandy Dedeaux believes that her daughter’s kindness and inclusionary tendencies helped strengthen the group’s bonds.
“A lot of people said that she was the glue of the cheer squad, that she was the one that kept everything together,” Mandy said.
Even after her death in 2022, Blount and many members of the Sumrall High School cheer squad who knew her claimed they continued to feel her presence during competitions.
“We just really, we had to lean on each other a whole lot after the accident, and we actually won state that year, and then went to nationals in February and won,” Blount said. “As believers, we 100% believed that she was with us every moment, yeah. And then, we came home, we started over, and then went back to nationals again in February. And—same thing—we just feel like there were signs. We felt her there and won again.”
Visit camdendedeauxfoundation.com for more information on the foundation’s namesake and goals.
