The cheer team does more than you would think. The team works hard to keep the spirit of the crowd up during every game. They do many different stunts to keep the crowd entertained. Cheerleading takes a lot of dedication and hard work.

“The highlight of my season was breaking my collarbone and coming back stronger than ever,” said junior Kinzli Gould.

Injuries have been pretty high this season. Many back, knee, and shoulder injuries. Having 4 or more cheerleaders out at once can be a challenge. The coaches have to try their best to find what works while our other cheerleaders are out.

“It was a lot of pressure jumping right into cheering for varsity football. I had to learn how to do everything before the first varsity game. It was a big accomplishment for me though, and very surprising,” said junior Macie DeLaRosa.

The cheer team came into the new year knowing we would have a majority of new cheerleaders and freshman. The team had a total of 8 returning cheerleaders, giving us 16 new cheerleaders to teach cheers, chants, stunts, and band dances. Which we had roughly 6 weeks to do before we were cheering from the sidelines.

“We started Football season with more athletes new to the high school program than returners, and some athletes that had never cheered before. Despite this, I had high expectations for the group due to their natural talent, work ethic and genuine desire to improve,” said head coach Shannon Couger.

The team went into football season with 24 talented athletes, ready to work hard and make this season one of the best they have had in a while. The biggest challenge was for the returning seniors knowing they would have to step up and teach the new team members in a short amount of time.

“I took on the role of teaching most of the chants to the new girls, it took lots of patience and videos being sent out while I was at work, school and even at midnight,” said senior Chloe Maciel.

The returning cheerleaders had to adapt and move backwards in their progress to help catch the new cheerleaders up. It took a lot of repetition and patience from the returning girls and a lot of open minds and hard work from the new girls.

“The transition from football to basketball season is challenging regardless of how many athletes we do or do not have.  We only have 3 weeks to transition to basketball season, which is quite different than preparing for football season,” said head coach Shannon Couger.

Many other schools hold an open tryout between football and basketball season, but our coaches chose not to do this so we would get full use of the short time we do have to prepare for basketball.

“Basketball season allows us more opportunities to perform through dance, stunts, and collaboration with our amazing band and Tigerettes.  I look forward to putting these routines together and seeing our Team have fun performing them,” said head coach Shannon Couger.

Football and Basketball season have two completely different environments. Basketball being indoors gives the cheerleaders less space, therefore being closer to everything. Being closer to the game, students, parents and fans makes it feel completely different from football.

“Basketball is a faster-paced sport and as such requires us to be more fast-paced in our chant calling, readiness for timeouts, and ability to adjust based on what is happening in the game,” said head coach Shannon Couger.

The team has to work really hard to continue to improve while covering all 50+ games, keeping grades up, and for some working a part time job as well. The team puts in a lot more work than most would think.

“We will have some athletes that will have 25-30 games in three months, on top of schoolwork, other extracurricular activities, and outside sports, and working 20+ hours a week to save for college.  Surviving basketball season without burning out requires a true love for this sport, which this year’s Team has a lot of,” said head coach Shannon Couger.