“Come on pack, let’s beat ‘em!’” Heard from the side of the field, CHS’ sideline cheer team stands in the blazing sun for hours at a time while the football team plays on. These cheerleaders don’t just clap their hands and wave pom-poms around— they train and sacrifice their time to raise the team’s spirits on the field. They make their job look easy, but that is simply a result of their meticulous practicing. There is a great deal of dedication and grueling training that happens behind the scenes which many don’t ever consider when watching football games or basketball games.

Our school has two cheer teams: Sideline and Competitive cheer. Both put in hard work and dedication that often goes unnoticed. There is so much more to cheerleaders than what we see at the football games and the stereotypes that movies have set.

The Sideline team is out on the track during football games tumbling and performing a number of cheers from the multitude they’ve had to learn. Off the sidelines, the team is practicing stunts, jumps, cheers, and doing conditioning drills. The sideline cheerleaders must learn over 30 cheers for a single football game. Additionally, they have several intense workouts that would be similar to any other sport. This is what sideline cheer really is— all of this diligent work is what makes their performance during football games seem effortless. Freshman Kori Epling on the JV Sidelines team and incoming competitive cheerleader, shares her experiences of the training the team does.

“It is definitely a lot harder than a lot of people think,” Epling said. “Because most people just think it’s just cheering, waving pom-poms around, but a lot of time and effort goes into it and a lot of discipline goes into it.”

The competitive cheer season is also on it’s way to starting up. Within the first month of training there will be several hours filled with stunting, tumbling, and jumps. Then the team progresses to learn choreography for their competition routine. Competitions will be starting in November and ending in February or March. A plentiful amount of students at CHS are completely unaware of the competitive cheer team’s existence, however their efforts should be recognized. Senior Ryan Roberts shares her thoughts about the team.

“Something the school should know would definitely just be how hard we work,” Roberts said. “We put in a lot of hours and a lot of time outside of practice to really make sure our jumps are perfect, our tumbling, and then stunting practice. We make sure we are doing to the best of our ability the most advanced stunts that we can.”

What’s often mistaken about cheerleaders is the thought that they do not do any work or training, and that they are not real athletes. Many of the misconceptions come from the stereotypes spread by movies and TV shows. There’s a commonly held belief that cheerleaders are obnoxious and boy-crazy and not particularly driven. Freshman Mia Poovakad on the JV Sidelines team and an incoming competitive cheerleader explains her thoughts about these misleading stereotypes.

“A lot of people think, from movies specifically, and TV shows, that we just walk around like we’re mean, like we’re all cocky, we like to show off, like shown as popular in a way, but I feel like not all of us are like that,” Poovakod said. “We put a lot more effort into what we are doing than what the movies and TV shows show.”

Movies have casted cheerleaders as popular, mean, and obsessive. In reality, they are just like any other kid on a sports team. Many do not recognize that cheerleaders are athletes too. They train, they work hard, they dedicate themselves and a lot of effort towards their sport. Too often this hard work goes unnoticed, but at the end of the day, they are athletes. That’s all there is to it.