Cheer team overcomes challenges of fall season; Prepares for winter season

The cheerleaders pulled through injuries, late practice times, and sickness this fall season in order to make it to Regionals.

According to senior and cheer captain Kaylyn Shew, the cheerleaders “did really good during fall season, but it was hard when people got injured because [the cheer team] had to redo the routine.”

Co-captain Kylee Testerman hurt her shoulder mid-season, meaning her stunt group no longer had a flyer, and they couldn’t do their stunt in the routine, explains Shew.

However, this didn’t stop the team, “we made it to regionals,” says Katie Grimm, junior, “we were only maybe a point or two away from making it to states. We placed 4^th at regionals and 3^rd at counties.” Grimm describes how she felt about their accomplishment, “making it to regionals was so exciting,” Grimm continues, “this was my first time cheering for our school and seeing all of our hard work pay off when we made it to regionals was really nice.”

“I think fall season went really well,” Angie Conrad, junior, says “we almost made it to states even with people being injured and sick all the time. The only thing I’d want to change is more team bonding activities to make everyone closer.”

However, an injury wasn’t the only challenge the team faced. “I wish there were different practice times,” Grimm says. Freshman Ashely Calligaro agrees, “a lot of the time we had to practice in the wrestling room, which was too small to fit all of our mats and sometimes we had to move them all the way to the gym.”

“Some nights we had to be here until eight at night,” Grimm explains, “and we couldn’t really do anything about it because other sports had the gym, so we had to wait until they were done.” Grimm suggests that the cheer rotates with the other sports for early practices in the gym. “We could all take turns so that the cheer team doesn’t get stuck with practicing late every day.”

The late practice times are also affecting the team’s ability to do winter cheer, “I need to work and with the late practice times it’s just not possible,” Grimm says.

Another reason for not doing winter cheer that Grimm has is that she doesn’t know if she’ll “be able to get a ride to practice all the time since it’s not after school and [she] doesn’t get [her] license until January.”

At tryouts on November 16, according to junior Valorie Radel, three people came. This is not enough for there to be a winter team, therefore fall season was the last of the 2021-2022 school year.