The Competition Cheer Squad at SHS is shooting for the stars this season. As obscure as it may be among the student population, this team’s hard work should not go under-appreciated.
Cheerleading goes way beyond yelling sideline chants and showing up for the sole purpose of supporting other sports teams. In fact, they compete against other cheer teams in high-stakes competitions that have vastly evolved from the low-impact skills that occur on the sidelines. Each girl on both the competition and sideline team has a designated role: flier, base, backspot, tumbler, megaphone, sign holder, etc. This embodiment of school spirit really does go far in the competitive world.
Just last month, the SHS competition cheer team placed first at a local competition against teams from Moeller, Lakota West, and Princeton, an impressive performance for a team relatively new to the competition world. Competitive cheer is a generalized term for what is actually composed of two teams, gameday and traditional. Gameday routines are composed of a cheer, fight song, offense or defense chant, and short dance, while a traditional routine is two minutes and 30 seconds of rigorous dance moves, jump sequences, tumbling passes, and stunting. It is a lot to pack into such a short time.
Among these two teams are some very talented cheerleaders. The traditional team consists of 14 girls (three seniors, five juniors, two sophomores, and four freshmen), while the gameday team consists of 21 girls (four seniors, seven juniors, five sophomores, and five freshmen). Senior Gianna Herrera has been cheering for SHS since her freshman year. She said, “I love the atmosphere and the difficulty of the routine.”
The routine is normally very physically demanding and requires a grand amount of practice. It is an intense few minutes as girls are thrown in the air, flipping all over the mat while also yelling the chants as loud as possible. Cheerleading is not a sport that is just about looking pretty, it involves high athleticism.
This season especially, the girls have been pushing themselves to their absolute limits to qualify for United Cheerleaders Association cheerleading nationals in Florida. This would be a huge milestone for the Sycamore cheer program. Determined junior Heidi Kremer said, “This year, we’ve worked harder than ever, and hopefully it will land us at nationals.” When asked about the difference between sideline cheer and competition cheer, Kremer said, “It’s nice to be cheering for the good of our team rather than some other team like football or basketball.” It truly brings to light a whole aspect of cheer different from the stereotypical standing on the track and waving to the student section. With multiple competitions coming up in order to qualify for nationals, the team could surely use some of the same support that they give out all year long.
