Cheer showcased the amount of dedication and talent it takes to be a cheerleader. Cheer UIL took place on Jan. 5 in Fort Worth Texas.
“In UIL cheerleading is broken up into 2 different routines. We have a traditional routine which is more of an all star styled routine, that’s just straight music, then we break for a cheer section, and then the music starts up again and we do our pyramid,” senior Co-Captain Ariana Lopez said. “Then we also have a game day routine, where basically you’re trying to emulate how you would perform on the sidelines at a football game. When you go to UIL you’re just competing your game day routine.”
Cheer has been preparing for this competition before the school year even started, with Lopez stating that cheer has been practicing their UIL routine since July.
“We learn our routines back in July, and then we spend pretty much all of football season going over both routines in pieces and as we start getting closer to competition we start running what we call ‘Full Outs’,” Lopez said. “And that just means doing everything 100 percent as if you were on the mat competing it, we run it a couple times, we’ll stop, we’ll make adjustments, we’ll go over the counts just to make sure everyone’s on the same page, and then just continue to run full outs to build our endurance so when we compete we’ll be ready.”
All of that time and energy that Cheer put into getting their routine perfect seemed to have paid off with how the crowd responded to their routine.
“The crowd was electric during our routine. When we stepped onto the mat we had a lot of our other NEISD schools in the stands watching us and they were cheering us on super loud and we could kind of hear the crowd yelling back with us and it was super cool to see everyone come together and cheer us on,” Lopez said. “I wanna say we ranked 39 out of maybe 75 schools, we don’t really get told our rankings, only the top ten find out how they get ranked.”
While competing in competitions like UIL is a huge part of any sport, there is so much more that goes into being a cheerleader. Cheer is also about being in a community, and lifting people’s spirits both on and off the field.
“My favorite thing about cheerleading is being an ambassador for the community. I love going to the elementary school visits and going to different events and doing meet and greets and walking around taking pictures, and welcoming kids to school,” Lopez said. “I just think that’s a huge part of our job that goes unnoticed. It’s amazing how big of an impact you can make on somebody by being a cheerleader and telling them hello and good morning and how their face lights up and how excited they get.”
With the school year only half over there’s still big things coming for Cheer, one of those things being their national competition in February, and the medium varsity game.
“Our next thing is our national competition in Orlando, Florida. That is from Feb 7-12 and we will compete for the medium varsity game day title,” Lopez said.
