5, 4, 3, 2, 1, HALFTIME! While at a game, many use the sound of halftime as an excuse to grab a quick bite, for the AHS cheer team, this is the moment they have been anxiously waiting for.
For Nitya Gupta (11) the clock ticking zero in the second quarter is a whole new feeling in itself. “It’s a rush of adrenaline flowing through my body as my mind starts ticking in a million different directions. Make sure you get that move right. Don’t freeze up. For the flyer move, make sure to keep maintaining your balance,” said Gupta.
These exciting routines are not created overnight, however. What may look effortless to the audience is the result of many tiring days after school spent practicing stunts, counting beats, and performing at least 100 repetitions of the same choreography to create the best halftime experience possible. However, as Assistant Coach Carolyne Magnane explains, a team is only as good as its members, and the cheer members’ constant strive to improve is what makes their routine come together. “They always continue to push for what they want and fight for it, especially at practices.”
Cheerleading is not always as fun as it looks; members of the cheer team face many challenges that they have to overcome to keep going. Doing these crazy stunts can lead to injuries, which may not only take a physical toll on someone but also affect them mentally, as it did for Irene Aung (10) in the past season. “The hardest part is when I got injured, I couldn’t really do anything and had to watch people do stuff when I couldn’t.”
Cheer members also have to deal with controversy around cheer being a sport, which Aung finds often just as frustrating as injuries. “I feel like cheer isn’t considered as a sport that much, but it really, really is. It’s a lot of work. We have to do a lot of conditioning in order to be able to lift people off the ground,” she said. The overall lack of awareness around cheer makes it hard for others to realize what a complex and difficult sport it truly is.
The Cheer team during a football game on 9/12/2025 doing their stunt. “My favorite part overall of being on the team, would have to be performing,” said Nitya Gupta (11) (Photo Credit: Suhani Thakkar (11)).
To combat this controversy, Coach Magnane hopes to find ways to show others what cheer truly represents. “I want to see the program expand and hopefully bring it to everybody else and show them what cheer is. I want to show that we don’t just cheer on the sidelines, we also do our competition cheer, and that they’re here for a reason;it’s a sport, and it’s something that people love to do.”
While sideline cheer is what grabs the attention of most audiences, Gupta claims that competition cheer is what most members look forward to. “People look forward to competition cheer because they get to advance and refine their skills and build on the fundamentals they learned through sideline cheer, which is a lot more exciting.” However, while competition cheer may be more rewarding, it is also a lot more intense as they are competing against other great teams from different schools, She further explained, “Competitive cheer is more strict. There’s definitely more of a focus thing where we have to make sure we are giving it our all almost all the time so that we can perfect our routine.”
With all of this pressure of doing the choreography right and doing the stunts properly, the team has to find ways to deal with this, especially during competition season. For Aung, she always feels nervous before a performance. “Performing in front of others is never not scary for me. I usually try to visualize the routine before I go on to ease my nerves, but at the end of the day, performing is what we are here for, and we just need to be confident and go through it.”
While performing may intensify nerves, it also gives Gupta a boost of adrenaline, which helps her push through the performance and keeps her focused on doing her best. More than the adrenaline, however, Nitya finds that she feels so much joy whilewhen performing. “I am doing something I love surrounded by all of my closest friends, and it truly is the best feeling in the world.”
Eagle Era 
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