West Orange cheer readies for competitive season

Out in the back end of the West Orange High School gym sits the cheer room.

It’s a pretty busy spot for the cheer program during this time of the year — as the traditional cheer teams use it to practice for sideline — but it’s about to get even busier with the competitive season quickly approaching.

In the coming weeks, the girls on the traditional FHSAA team and medium all-girl team will take to the mat for daily practices five days a week for two-and-a-half hours a day. 

“It’s a totally different gear,” head coach Alicia Light said. “For us — for sideline — we practice three days a week, with games on Friday. It’s a little more laid-back, because we are looking at crowd involvement versus technical, so competition is much more technical.”

The practices alone easily separate sideline cheer from competitive cheer, and it’s also what many of the girls say is the biggest challenge to overcome. 

Bumping your after-school practice time from three to five days is exhausting, but it’s also a lot of fun when you get the chance to hone your craft, senior Emma Herring said.

“I’m excited to finally get the routine together with (the) new team, because I feel like we’ll be doing a lot this year,” Herring said. “The practices are a lot more intense, and we’re doing a lot more and it’s more endurance versus cheering on your school. Sideline really helps, because we work on the pieces throughout the year — during practices and games we’ll practice it, and competition is just putting it all together in one routine.”

The hours and hours of commitment to learning cheers and choreography eventually all boils down to the most exciting two-and-a-half minutes offered by the sport.

In that short time frame, there’s a minute-and-a-half of music that has the team incorporate a ton of elite stunts skills, pyramids, jumps and tumbling, before a minute of cheer has the girls leading the crowd with chants, signs and more stunts.

Unlike other sports, where you have hours to get things corrected, the competitive cheer teams have to work in absolute precision as the slightest of hiccups can be the difference between a first-place finish and last place.

It’s something not lost on Light’s team, which is why — despite some pre-competition jitters — the girls go out with a mission to dominate.

“You just have to know that you have the skills and that we have practiced for this,” senior Abby Rule said. “We have been practicing for a long time, and you’re going to go out and be able to do it just like you do at home.”

A CHANGING PROGRAM

The competitive cheer program has changed quite a bit the last few years, thanks largely to outside forces.

Light — who is now in her sixth year at West Orange — saw a good chunk of her team leave the school when Windermere High first opened up, and that would change the program going forward.

Last year, for instance, was the first time the traditionally coed team went all-girl.

“It was a huge change,” Light said. “Size-wise, we just weren’t getting the number of boys we were able to recruit before, so we decided to go all-girl and it was a huge difference.

“The scoresheets are completely different, because in coed it’s all based on coed skills, so the boys have to be the ones doing the stunts, while in all-girls it’s all hands on deck,” she said.

The new change kept Light and the team on their toes, but it ended up working out pretty well as the Warriors would end their season at states with a seventh-place finish.

This season will see more change for the program, as the cheer team moves from last year’s large all-girls team to a medium-sized team — made up of 16 members. Light also will have a 30-member team competing in the game-day division, which is unique to the Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA).

With so many practices and events in such a relatively short amount of time, there’s a lot of work that lies ahead for the Warriors. And for the program’s three seniors, it’s one last season to enjoy the company of their teammates, while getting to take part in the sport that they love.

“I will definitely take away a lot of memories — since I’ve been on the team for so long — but I’m just really excited because I know we have a lot of girls on the team this year that are really dedicated and really want to try,” senior Jessica Lyle said. “I’m just really excited and I hope that we get the outcome that we want.”