By Paul Doherty Sports Editor Morgan Hill – Cheerleaders train,
practice and compete in regional and national competitions. They
also represent their schools and rally fan support at games.
By Paul Doherty
Sports Editor
Morgan Hill – Cheerleaders train, practice and compete in regional and national competitions. They also represent their schools and rally fan support at games.
Like basketball, football and baseball players, cheerleaders have to make the team, attend practices, and stay in shape.
They get scholarships for their performances, they have to make grades to stay on the team and anyone involved with a cheer organization will say cheerleading IS a sport.
The Sobrato and Live Oak cheer squads have already began practicing for the 2007-08 school year, and are looking forward to the “fun” rivalry between the two schools.
Live Oak senior Kendall Foster, 17, is going into her sixth year of cheerleading, and still loves providing positive energy and helping to the get the players pumped up for games.
“We want them to win and it is rewarding to being able to help the team out when they’re not doing well,” Foster said.
The Live Oak squad practices five days a week for two hours a day where they run, do crunches and push-ups.
“We need really good lungs and have to have good cardio to be able to shout, cheer and dance,” she said.
While the Live Oak girls are required to maintain a 2.0 grade average, making grades is not the hard part for Foster.
“We learn about 75 cheers, and remembering moves and movements and being able to do them at the drop of a hat is probably the most demanding aspect,” she said.
About the still developing rivalry between Live Oak and Sobrato, Foster thinks it is natural.
“Honestly it’s not a dangerous or mean rivalry,” Foster said. “There’s a little bit of tension, but nothing nasty … it’s a healthy rivalry.”
Sobrato junior cheerleader Julia Pasek, 16, is going into her fourth year of cheerleading, which is surprising considering she used to hate it.
“In eighth grade my friends dared me to try out,” Pasek said. “I made the team and ended up quitting competitive soccer because I grew to love it.”
For Pasek the most demanding and rewarding aspect of cheerleading is performing.
“Doing a performance and getting it right is the best,” she said. “And especially during practice if we keep doing the cheer over and over it’s a lot of cardio work, and stunting strains your muscles.”
Pasek, who went to Britton Middle School, doesn’t view the Live Oak-Sobrato tension as so much of a rivalry.
“I’m friends with a few girls on the Live Oak team so it’s not the same for me, but I guess there’s a little rivalry because we’re allowed to compete and they’re not,” Pasek said.
At Sobrato, unlike Live Oak, the cheer team gets to compete in regional and national competitions.
“We go to regional competitions throughout the Bay Area with about 10 schools per division and about 10-15 divisions,” cheer coach Melissa Cousens said. “And the national competition in Anaheim has about 20 different divisions and about 30 schools per division … it’s huge”
Cousens, who is in her 15th year as a cheer coach, runs her team like a class, where the girls have to meet certain criteria to stay on the team and participate in the competitions.
“I keep grade checks on girls throughout the year and they have to maintain a 2.0 GPA,” Cousens said. “There are 43 girls on the team this year with 24 on Varsity. Of those 43 anyone can be on the competitive team, as long as they have a 2.3 GPA.”
Also, if a cheer team member doesn’t get an A in PE at any point, she has to run a mile every day until she gets that grade up, Cousens said.
The cheer season officially started the first week of July and at this point the Sobrato girls are focused on conditioning.
“I have the girls run, do push-ups, leg lifts, lunges, and they’re doing miles of running,” Cousens said.
Both the Sobrato and the Live Oak teams are getting ready for cheer camp at the University of Santa Cruz in mid-August, and the Sobrato team is preparing to host their annual cheer clinic, July 30-31.
“Basically we send out flyers and put up flyers throughout the South Bay, and a lot of people find out from friends and it’s kind of word-of-mouth,” Cousens said. “It’s ages five and up, and the kids learn cheers, dances, tumbling, fun ice-breaker games, and stunting, when the girls get thrown into the air, and the programs that I run are very detailed.”
Cousens said the most rewarding aspect is knowing that she can help somebody achieve more.
“Helping a girl get a better grade or overcome a personal obstacle, giving advice, just knowing that you can personally help someone is the best,” Cousens said. “Whether it’s learning how to do a back flip or helping someone raise a B to an A, it’s so gratifying, and I get paid almost nothing.”
To be a cheerleader at Sobrato it costs each girl approximately $2,000 throughout the course of the year, with a lot of the money coming form community fundraisers, while at Live Oak the cost to be a cheerleader is roughly $1,000.
The money goes towards uniforms, equipment, camps, and for Sobrato, going to competitions.
Regardless of the price though, all of the people within the cheerleading community will argue for the merits of cheerleading as a sport.
“There’s no question it’s a sport, competition adds a whole new aspect to cheerleading,” Pasek said. “Being a cheerleader is also a leadership role as we are responsible for raising school spirit, and we are heavily involved in the community with fundraising and a lot of behind the scenes stuff.”
Foster like her Sobrato counterpart definitely considers cheerleading to be a sport.
“I’d like someone to provide reasons why it isn’t a sport,” she said. “I don’t know what people are thinking when they say it’s not a sport. We practice just as hard as other teams.”
Live Oak sophomore cheerleader Catherine Miller, 15, also considers cheerleading to be a sport because they practice just as hard as the football players, she said.
“Without us the games wouldn’t be the same,” Miller said. “We’re definitely a part of their sport if we’re not our own.”
Sport or not, cheerleaders spend the whole school year putting their all into school spirit.
“We do have a fun rivalry, and we’re going to try to get together with Live Oak and do something with them for basketball season” Cousens said. “We actually try to go to soccer games, track meets and waterpolo games, and I really want to require them to go to one sporting event per week after the season ends.”
