With months of preparation, the varsity cheer team felt calm and ready for their trip to the state. The varsity cheer team had a long day ahead of them, mostly sitting around and bonding. With a day full of ups and downs, the Frederick cheer team has accomplished more this year than ever before. With the constant growth of the cheer team, there are elements that shape what the state is all about.
State cheer is a big competition against people in your division, kind of like football. How many students are at your school will determine what division you are in. At Frederick High School, there are about 1,200 students; therefore, the school is in a 4A division, and those are the teams we go up against.
Frederick High School went on to compete at around 10 a.m. and then had to wait to see what they placed later that day at 4 p.m. After the long wait, the cheerleaders hung out, ate, and slept. Nobody likes being in one place for a long time. Lily Williams stated, “Sitting around all day long definitely wasn’t good for us. I started to get tired, and on top of that, I was hungry, so my mood quickly started to drop.” As the time passed, the announcements finally approached. As the cheerleaders gathered close together, holding hands with the support of their parents and, of course, Chris Tone, they started listing schools one by one with their times to compete again.
Seeing the girls jump up as the announcer calls the Frederick Golden Eagles, the coach and cheerleaders are filled with joy and are screaming in shock. This has been the first year the Frederick high school cheer team has made it to the finals at the state level, as well as placing 4th in the semi-finals. The golden eagles then performed again at 7 p.m., which meant more waiting around and more tired cheerleaders. However, the long wait, filled with anxiety and happiness, made the time pass quickly. When it was time to go on, the cheerleaders went through the whole warm-up process again.
The process of warmups is the 5-5-5 rule, which means you have 5 minutes to warm up tumbling, 5 minutes to warm up stunts, and a full mat with 5 minutes to do a full-out if needed. After warmups, you wait for the worker to tell you to set your props and get set on the mat. The team goes on, sets their props, and gets ready to compete again. Everything started going well until our elite stunts. One of the elite stunts fell twice, causing two deductions, as well as one of our teammates passing out. Reese Hallack blacked out after her flyer fell on her really hard. She then stated, “I am fine; I just didn’t know where I was until I realized that I was getting pulled up to keep going.” So as the team keeps going, they transition into the cheer, trying to engage the crowd and get as many points as possible. With a good cheer, they transition to the last half of the routine with the dance and end pyramid. The dance was good as always, but the pyramid was not so good. One side didn’t go up on time, which messed up the main group on that side. When they finally caught up with the other side of the pyramid, it was time to hit the end structure.
The end structure is like a key point because no matter how much a team messes up, you get up to your end structure and hit it like no mistakes were made. Unfortunately, one stunt group ended up falling, causing another deduction there. Despite the disappointment of the team and the coaches, they were just happy to get a chance to be at the finals. Going from 85 points with 0 mess-ups and deductions to 73 with 6 mess-ups is a hard hit. After this, the cheerleaders took part in the awards and an athlete parade even though they knew they weren’t going to place because they ended up taking 7th place in the finals. The biggest lesson for the cheerleaders is that no matter what happened, they still made a difference in their cheer program.
