After months of hard work and preparation, cheer’s competition season is in full gear. Over the past few weekends, the cheer team has competed in two UIL competitions to prove their strengths amongst the best cheer teams in Texas. At the National Cheerleader Association (NCA) competition this in the beginning of February, cheer finished as runner-up in the nation for their intermediate performance routine.
The cheerleaders spent many morning practices perfecting the choreography and working together effortlessly. The team worked extremely hard in practices, and built endurance through full outs, stunt rounds, and tumbling workouts.
“We started preparing around September when we got our two routines choreographed,” sophomore cheerleader, Natalee Nelson explained.
While everything was seemingly good for the team, disaster struck, and the road to competition got difficult.
“We had so many athletes that got hurt so we had to end up switching to a different division, and replaced 5 people in the routine before competition which was very stressful,” Nelson said.
Regardless of the injuries and pitfalls that occurred, the team persevered. Nelson described how hard the team pushed themselves, and how they were so “determined.” The drive the team showed during practices all the way to competitions was truly immeasurable.
“A few weeks before competition is when we really found our drive,” Nelson said. “We wanted to do whatever we could to help us be prepared.”
Through all these intense performances, the team has never been closer. When you work with teammates for such long periods of time, there is no doubt that the team will grow closer. This was no different from cheer’s experience during their preparation for competition season.
“I think that we have a sense of togetherness that we hadn’t really had all season. We wanted to be successful so badly and we truly became a team for the first time all season,” Nelson shared. “[Competition] creates those love hate relationships when everyone gets so frustrated when things aren’t going well, because we all care so much.”
When the cheer squad finally made it to competition, they did amazing. The team went to finals for the first time in the school’s history. The cheerleaders also placed 16th out of 72 teams in their division. But one question remained, what would the future of Falcon Cheer look like?
“Each year with new freshman coming in and seniors leaving it creates a different atmosphere,” Nelson explained. “I think coming in second two years in a row really made our team hungry to want to win and we will be more determined than ever.”
No matter how they place, our Falcon Family will always be so proud of our cheerleaders. Whether it’s performing at a pep rally, football game, or competition, we are all so excited to see what great things these Falcons do next.