The competition cheer team hosted a home comp on Sept. 18, with schools: Rustburg High School, Salem High School, and Waynesboro High School. Wildcats have not hosted a home competition since 2017.
Many wildcat fans and families came out to support our cheer team on this night. Since there is not normally a home comp, senior night is held at a football game during sideline cheer, but this year, they were able to have it during the competition.
There are seven seniors in competition and sideline cheer this season. Those seniors include Addy Clark, Ella Culp, Myranda Deacon, Addie Flint, Emma Hall, Emily Humphreys, and Cameron Terry.
Out of those seniors, Clark, Hall, and Terry, are the captains. There is also one underclass captain, junior Willow Rogers. They lead and encourage the team through practices, sideline, and competition.
Physical Education Teacher Shannon Bryan is the head coach of the team. She believes that there should always be an underclassmen captain to keep the team building up and ready for future seasons.
Bryan hired a cheer choreographer to help guide and improve their routine to advance their placing during the season. As a result, so far, the team has been winning either first or second place at all of their competitions. At the home competition, they placed first.
Scoring can be difficult to understand and has different complexities to it. A lot of scoring decisions can also depend on the competition as a whole because there are different and/or new judges with various opinions.
Hall explains how the scoring of competition cheer works.
“There is a rubric that is based off of stunts, tumbling, baskets, pyramids, and the overall dance. The difficulty is based on skills that are placed in different ranges. When competing, you want to be at the higher end of the difficulty scale, but execution of the routine through cleanliness and technique is also crucial,” said Hall.
Hall further explained that execution can actually outweigh the difficulty of scoring. This depends on the judges and how the routine went.
Majority of routines vary timewise. They have to be a minimum of 2 and a half minutes long and cannot exceed a time of 3 minutes. Rogers stated the length of theirs.
“Our routine is 3 minutes long,” said Rogers.
After the teams perform their routines, each team circles together on the floor, waiting for the judges to call out scoring and places. Routines and performance are crucial, as each team has their own features and special skills.
“This year we have been working really hard on our routine, we started really early this summer perfecting our routine and having workouts,” said Rogers.
As the team continues through the year, their next competition will be districts, depending on their placing will determine their path for regionals and state finals. Rogers talks about how she thinks the season will complete.
“We have been doing really well in competitions so far and I think it is going to be a great season. I feel good about our next competition, and I think we will continue to go farther into regionals,” said Rogers.
Come out to support your wildcat cheerleaders at their next competition, on Oct. 23. If you can’t make that, come support them on the sidelines at the next home football game!
