How long have you been doing cheerleading?

I started as a sophomore. I had no experience before that.

What is your role as captain for cheerleading?

I think I do a lot to keep the morale high, like making sure that everybody is feeling good about what they are doing because cheerleading is a hard sport and routines do not always go how we want them to. It’s frustrating and it’s challenging and I think a lot of my job, but still recognizing they are doing a good job.

What do you think you as a player bring to cheerleading, besides being captain?

Cheerleading is one of those sports where it’s really a team sport. It’s one of the only sports I can think of where you really rely on each other seriously, especially in routines. I bring my best self to practice and to games and to competitions every time. I have faith that all my teammates will do the same and that’s how it works.

Not as many people know about the competition aspect of cheerleading. Can you speak to this part of cheer?

Yeah, that is a serious misconception about cheer. We practice for the things we do at games during the preseason. Then the rest of practice is actually for competition, not for games. At competitions we go and we meet various other teams. We go onto to the floor and we perform a routine, which includes stunting, tumbling, jumping, and dancing. We compete for a score just to beat ourselves mostly. Last year we did four, this year we have four scheduled and if we score high enough at the last competition, we will move on to the regional competition.