Cheerleading is not an easy sport. The girls on the cheer team practice for hours to perform at a game.

However, even with all of this hard work, many girls on the team feel that there isn’t enough recognition towards their sport.

Listen to the morning announcements, they always talk about the basketball games, football games, games where the cheer team performs. They never talk about the team themselves. 

The reason for this may be because they don’t have cheer competitions at the junior high. They just perform at sports games.

At the high school, the cheerleaders have competitions. Here at the middle school, the team just performs for sporting events.

Even though they don’t have their own games or have competitions, they still need to be recognized and appreciated for their work.

Cheerleading really is just like any other sport. They have their own team, work hard and they need to have special skills to perform. They just don’t have “cheerleading games.”

Eighth grade English teacher and cheerleading coach Autumn Barry-Kyle said, “Basically what’s looked for in tryouts is knowing the material, smiling and being loud.”

Some people think that the recognition at the high school is different from the junior high.

Barry-Kyle said, “I do think there is more recognition at the high school primarily because their events are better attended.”

Because the high school is bigger, more people go to the football, wrestling and basketball games. Also, at the high school, their cheerleading is different. The cheerleaders there do more tricks than at the junior high.

Many outsiders might wonder what exactly a cheerleader has to practice.

Eighth grade cheerleader Nevaeh Boynton said, “We get to stunt each other and throw each other in the air all the time. It’s super fun.”

Stunts are building performances that display a team’s skill. Stunts usually become more complex in high school cheer.

Cheering from sport to sport isn’t easy either.

The team has to switch their routines to fit the sport: for football they stand up, for basketball they sit down.

Boynton said, “I think they differ because less people attend the basketball games, so it’s less nerve-wracking.”

“It’s harder to get the crowd to interact with us for the football games,” eighth grade cheerleader Kalia Potts said.

In the future, we could show more appreciation towards the team by having an appreciation day or posting more about them on social media.

All in all, the girls on the team should be more appreciated for their work as they represent our school.