Cheerleading is a highly popular sport in high school movies, where the captain is always dating the quarterback on the football team. But life isn’t like the movies, and neither is cheer.

People often consider cheer to be an activity, not a sport. However, according to the dictionary, a sport is “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” An activity is “a thing that a person or group does or has done.”

Some contradict this argument and say that every sport only has one season, but cheer has two (basketball and football), which disqualifies it as a sport. And, they argue, that cheerleaders are there to entertain people, not to compete. While the two-seasons argument is true, cheerleaders do compete.

Cheer is nearly a year-round sport, The season starts in November and goes through late March. Practices are three to five days a week depending on how the team is progressing that week on their program.

This year, the team has 27 members, but only 24 can compete in the competitions.
Cheerleading is a unisex sport, meaning girls and boys can try out to be part of the team.

Coach Kimberly Gonzales says the best part of coaching cheer is being able to help the team grow as individuals and also as teammates. Her goals this season are to really focus on sportsmanship, class, and community. “Cheer has always been focused on basketball and football,” she explains. “This year we want to focus on the entire school and the sports that it offers.”

Athlete Mia Martinez, a sophomore, has been on the team since eighth grade. She says that cheer is her passion and she loves the sport. To her, the best part of being on the team is going to competitions with her cheer family.

The different positions in cheer include the flyer, base, spotter or tumbler. The flyer is the individual who gets thrown or pushed up into the air. The bases hold the flyer, or top girl, during the stunt. The spotter is a trained member of the team who watches for and works to reduce hazards during stunts and tumbling. The tumblers are the athletes who use their bodies to flip, twist, roll, and jump.

Coach Kimberly would like to share some extra information on the team and the sport: “Our team is very talented and they need more support from the school. We are trying to work on more involvement. Everyone needs to support each other.”

Mia says, “Cheer is a difficult sport and it is not how it is portrayed in movies and TV shows.”