For the first time in nearly a decade, Roosevelt High School’s cheerleading team will begin cheering competitively again this winter.
Roosevelt Cheer competed in the early 2000s, but due to a coaching change and by vote, the team stopped participating in competitions. Jordan French, current Roosevelt Cheer coach said, “It’s been about 10 years I would guess, I came on in 2016 and none of the people I coached at that time had competed. So that puts it back to at least 2012 or earlier.”
Washington state hosts a number of cheer competitions during the winter season. The first one Roosevelt participated in was hosted at Peninsula High School in Gig Harbor Nov. 5.
The cheer team holds votes to decide if they will compete each year. If even one member decides they do not want to, the team will not compete that year. “We don’t do it where it’s like a democracy where the majority rules type situation, we do it where every vote counts. So if there’s one person that says no, we’re not doing it,” said senior member Victoria Macabu. Competition fees and transportation funds are not provided by the school, making participation a big decision.
The cheer team is among Roosevelt’s few year-long sports teams. “Competing will help the school understand, especially if we get a trophy, that we are working towards something, that there are levels to what we are doing,” said Macabu. “It’s assumed that we have all this free time to go to everybody’s game when … we are the only year-round sport at Roosevelt High School and we’re still talked about as if we’re not a sport.”
Anya Gubas, a sophomore member added to this idea, “I think it’ll bring a different aspect to the team that maybe the rest of the school hasn’t really noticed before, …to bring in a more competitive aspect, I think that will maybe increase interest in the team.”
Competing provides new opportunities for Roosevelt Cheer, allowing for different routines not typically seen at a pep assembly or game to be showcased. Makelle Lindsey, a sophomore on the team, said she hopes “It will just allow us to improve more as we go because it’s multiple competitions throughout winter. So I hope it just allows us to improve our skills, get more chances to perform, all that good stuff.”
In a cheer competition, teams compete against each other over a set number of weeks. Teams perform their best stunts and dances in hopes to take the number one spot against rival teams.
Macabu describes the elements of what a cheer competition looks like, “There’s a judging panel and so every school goes up, and there’s different categories that you can submit into so you can submit into game day, you can do competition routine, or stunting.”
Of those categories, the cheer team has decided to go into the game day category which includes a fight song, a choreographed routine, and a chant.
Bringing competition into cheer will add challenge and more opportunities for the team to demonstrate the skills they work to develop throughout the year.
