Karah-Leigh Hancock
The Valdosta Daily Times
VALDOSTA —
Those who visit the Pizza Hut on U.S. 84 on a regular basis have probably met Blair Haggard.
The petite blonde, who is a distant cousin of country music legend Merle Haggard and was named after the character on “The Facts of Life,” has been working at Pizza Hut since coming to Valdosta three years ago.
Haggard, who is originally from Sallisaw, Okla., a small town near Fort Smith, Ark., a town on the Oklahoma-Arkansas border, first heard about Valdosta while attending a junior college in Kansas.
It’s also where she first became serious about cheerleading, which led her to Valdosta State University.
“I went to play junior college basketball at a school in Kansas my first year,” Haggard said. “I cheered in high school, but it wasn’t anything serious. (This) was a co-ed team and they were like, ‘Come here, you’re small enough!’ I went and they started throwing me up (in the air) and I went to practices with them once a week.”
Becoming a part of the team led Haggard to a basketball and cheerleading scholarship.
“There was a girl from Macon on my cheer team. We called her ‘Georgia.’ I think she had a cousin that cheered here at Valdosta, but she’s the one that told me about it,” she said. “So, I sent in a tryout video to come here and I made it.”
Haggard drove to Valdosta, a 16-hour trip from her hometown in Oklahoma, on her own to start a new life in Valdosta.
Since becoming a cheerleader at Valdosta State, she has earned two national championship rings — one as a cheerleader for the 2007 National Championship football team and the other for being a member of the coed team that won the 2009 National Cheerleading Association Open Division II title.
“It was fun,” she said. “It was a lot of fun. (The football championship) was my first experience at a national championship, and then to go last year and win for cheerleading, that was awesome too because it’s all kind of new to me. I never took cheerleading seriously until I came down here.”
While a lot of people claim that cheerleading isn’t a real sport, Haggard has other thoughts on the matter.
“The thing with cheerleading is, well, I really like basketball because it’s considered an athletic game,” she said. “There’s a lot of controversy about (cheerleading) not being a sport, but I put more time and effort and practicing into cheerleading than I ever did in basketball. I got hurt more in cheerleading than I did in basketball.
“I don’t think people actually understand how much time you put in because it’s not just us going to competitions. We have to prepare for games, exhibitions, all of that. It’s just a lot of preparation and time put into cheerleading. It’s so time consuming that I wouldn’t be able to work as much as I do now because it takes a lot of time.”
Haggard left the cheerleading program at VSU this year due to her work schedule and the fact that she’s getting into her major classes.
She is now in her third year at VSU where she is an Early Childhood Education major.
“I graduate in December, but I want to take a couple of more classes and take a test in P.E. so I can get certified to coach as well,” she said.
After graduation, she will be certified to teach prekindergarten through grade five, and with her certification after passing a test, she would be able to coach or teach physical education.
Haggard got her love of teaching honestly — her mother is a kindergarten teacher back home in Oklahoma.
“She always told me to go somewhere where the weather’s better and it pays better,” she said. “The South pays a little better. Oklahoma is the second lowest paid state in the U.S., so she told me to get away.”
And working hard is exactly what Haggard is doing.
While she’s still busy with her classes, she works at Pizza Hut and for the VSU Athletic Department, doing work such as running concession stands at baseball games. During the summer, she works at Sports Additions in Valdosta Mall.
In what little free time she does have, Haggard makes sure she has time to talk to her family back home.
“My family is my heart,” she said. “I have a 6-year-old baby brother and a 19-year-old brother. I’m really close to my mom and dad and my grandparents, so in my free time I call them.”
She also tries to make time to do a little shopping for herself.
“It’s no fun making money and not spending it,” she said. “So, I try to spend a little money on myself. If I didn’t spend any, I would be so miserable. I pay my own bills, so that’s why it’s so hard. I don’t get help from anybody else. I get my work ethic from my dad. I’ve worked since I was 14 years old and I’ve always had two jobs.”
Haggard has been working with Pizza Hut for more than seven years. She first worked with the company in her hometown in Oklahoma, but after she moved to Valdosta, she was transferred to the restaurant on U.S. 84.
“I really enjoy the Pizza Hut here because it’s off the interstate and the summers are really crazy because we get a lot of Wild Adventures people and there’s a lot of travelers,” she said. “You always meet somebody new every night you work. I have a lot of regulars and I’m grateful for that because I meet a lot of good people, but it’s always changing. That’s what I really enjoy about it here.”
The customers at Pizza Hut see how much of a hard worker Haggard is when she waits on their tables.
“I’ve actually gotten people that have seen me work in Pizza Hut and see how hard I work and they are like, ‘Come fill out an application when you graduate,’” she said. “You just never know who you’re going to meet. That’s why, if I’m at Pizza Hut, I’ll be the best pizza maker ever. I try my best at everything I try.
“You just never know who’s watching, so whatever I do, I try to do my best.”
