American High School cheerleaders explaining their modified and unique season
Elise Kaylor
Staff Writer
Sofia Reyes (12) –
“Since I’ve been doing cheer since freshman year it is disappointing to have the season progress like this. Senior year is the best year in cheer as there are two senior nights and I was looking forward to walk down the football field and basketball court with my family. Cheer has been a big part of my life and a true passion of mine since I was nine and stunting was my favorite part of the whole cheer experience but now stunting is not going to be a part of it which was disheartening.”
Savvy Giang (10) –
“Practice has definitely changed since quarantine. Before, it was a place where we got to do cheers, stunt and form a better bond with our teammates, but with the new social distancing protocols we don’t get that bond. A cheer team basically relies on a strong team bond and recent practices has just made it slightly harder to do so. Now, we are outside on the blacktop spread 6 feet apart. However, we have been doing activities like dress-up days for practice and things like scavenger hunts.”
Joan Huang (11) –
“This year has been heavily affected by COVID-19 with our practices being short, fast paced, and socially distanced. Regardless, I believe we will get to the phase of in person practices where we can stunt soon and I’m looking forward to improving and increasing the amount of skills I can do stunt wise”
Different Quote
“As a junior and experiencing my third year of cheer during a pandemic, I’m exasperated it has to be this way. Everyone has been going through a lot during this time, but we still have in person practices which I’ve slowly learned to enjoy. These practices give me a chance to step up as a leader on the team since we are split into multiple pods, I would obviously prefer to have the full experience but this will do as well.”
Sarah Lewis (10) –
“We’ve been working on sideline cheers but unfortunately haven’t gotten to stunt and tumble [which I was looking forward to]. But we have been maintaining fun and being optimistic by playing games every once in a while. I really enjoyed meeting new people and seeing their progress throughout the season and how hard they work since we had to learn materials over zoom”
Wendy Trejo (10) –
“It has been a little more difficult since most practices have to be on Zoom and we can’t really talk to the other people on the team and make connections with them like we would if we we’re having a normal season. We have been Facetiming or texting for fun though! [The most memorable thing we did was] we had a scavenger hunt in our houses.”
Sela Danaf (12) –
“Right now we are reviewing our cheers and dances from summer clinics before the season started. Practice is definitely weird being online as well as in person with masks. To be honest it has been hard [to stay positive] but the things keeping me positive is just the laughs we have as a team.”
Sagel Provancher (11) –
“[My favorite thing to do was the] games. One time we were split up into three teams and we play games and whoever gets the most points at the end of this gets a prize.”
Eagle Era 