ANGRY GRAD SUES OVER REJECTION IN CHEERLEADER TRY.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

QUARTZ HILL - Kelly Smith's battle over her rejection for the Quartz Hill High School cheerleading squad is moving to federal court.

Smith, 18, who graduated this month, has filed a lawsuit in federal court, claiming that Antelope Valley Union High School District violated her civil rights. Smith is of Puerto Rican descent.

Smith's mother, Liz Smith, declined to comment Friday.

Smith filed the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court, contending that cheerleading coach Tammy Stewart, motivated by racial bias, rigged her scores during the 2002 tryouts. Smith is seeking unspecified damages from Stewart and other school district employees.

A lawsuit was filed in Superior Court but it was withdrawn in May, officials said.

Kelly and her mother went to court last September, asking for a court order to fire the Quartz Hill High cheerleading coach. Then they demanded a new hearing before the school board, saying the board's first hearing on their complaints about the selection process and Stewart was stacked against them.

``Cheer is not the issue,'' Liz Smith told the Daily News in March. ``It was never the issue. It was how somebody treated (Kelly).''

School officials and Stewart have denied that anything was done wrong or that the original hearing was unfair, and contested the Smiths' case in court.

At the heart of the case, Liz Smith has said, is a grudge she says Stewart held against Kelly for besting a friend's daughter in the Miss Quartz Hill pageant more than a year earlier.

Stewart denies holding a grudge, and says Kelly, a cheerleader the previous two years, flubbed her tryout.

To back up their complaint, the Smiths have a declaration from one of the five judges. Eric Guerrero said Stewart told him she did not want Kelly Smith on the team and later changed the score he had given to the girl.

On Stewart's side, Vice Principal Karen Parker, who supervised the cheerleading tryouts, said Stewart never had an opportunity to alter the score sheets.

After the controversy broke out, the Smiths said Stewart made the cheerleaders wear T-shirts in support of her. Stewart said the opposite is true: She ordered the girls not to wear them.

Kelly Smith, her mother said, has lost friends over the case, and Kelly's brother has been subjected to harassment at school. In addition, Kelly was the subject of teasing after the student newspaper at Quartz Hill High drew a picture of her and her attorney.