The new team: Varsity cheer team will now be the competition team instead of having a separate squad

In December, cheer coach Laura Buckman had a team meeting and announced that the varsity cheer team and competition cheer team will be merged into one next year. Cheer coach Laura Buckman decided to make this change to benefit both teams with more practice time. This will change the category they perform along with practice times, tryouts and more. 

Right now, varsity practices once a week from 6:15-7:20 a.m, however this change allows everyone to practice during first house, eliminating early-morning practices. 

Currently, the competition cheer team does a routine in the performance category, which involves more advanced tumbling and stunts, but with the switch, they’ll be in the gameday category for competitions where you aren’t allowed to tumble and only do simple stunts. 

“The routine now relies heavily on advanced stunting and elite tumbling skills,” Buckman said. “I think with what our athletes have to offer we’re better suited for the gameday performance.” 

Sophomore Eleanor Peattie mourns the loss of the performance category, saying she’ll miss the tumbling, jumps, elite stunt section, pyramid section, and most importantly the last part of the routine, the dance. 

The new routine means tryouts this year will be less focused on tumbling and more on strong motions and loud vocals.

This change has created some problems for cheerleaders that go to the Center of Academic Achievements. The CAA has certain available time slots open for classes. Some are only first-semester classes which can cause problems because going to the CAA takes up all three of your electives that semester. Cheer is only first hour first semester so it would conflict with each other. 

Junior Emma Price is planning on taking the CNA course (a class offered at the CAA)  next year to hopefully get her certified nursing assistants degree as she wants to be a nurse when she’s older. When she first heard about the news on the change she was scared because she loves cheer but also wants to work towards her career goals. 

Fortunately, she found out the class she wants to take is open second semester as well, so now she can participate in cheer and get her certificate.

“The first thing I did was text my mom like, ‘Did you hear this?'” Price said. “And she was like, ‘Oh, no.’ But in the end, we got it all figured out, which helped ease my stress a little bit.”

To make this change Buckman had to get clearance from the administration to make sure switching requirements were approved.

“This idea developed throughout the seasons and I kinda had a light bulb moment right before Thanksgiving break about how this would make so much sense for the program,” Buckman