Practice Routine

We have practice Monday through Friday. The normal time we have practice is from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Sometimes we have to alter our times. Practice is at 5 o'clock sharp! If you are one minute late the entire team has to run a lap, if you are two minutes late the team has to run two laps, and so on. When you get to practice you need to be ready to go. You cannot have any jewelry in, your hair needs to be up off your shoulders and out of your face, and you need to have proper workout attire.

We run ten laps around the mats to start off. While we are running we shout our cheer that we say in our routine; it takes a lot out of me. After our laps we start stretching. We have certain stretches we do together and count to ten as a team for each stretch. When we are done stretching we do fifteen push-ups. I know our warm ups don't sound too harsh, and they really aren't, but it is what we do and personally I am satisfied with it. I have progressively gotten stronger and more efficient. Oh, and after warm ups we basically just go through our routine over and over.

Competitions

Competitions are to games as cheerleading is to football. In other words: Competitions for us are like games for football players. We go compete against other competitive cheerleading squads. We are judged on a scale of points, for example: for stunting you can get oen to five points with five being the highest possible score. At our first competition this year we got second place overall out of four squads. By the way, we have a competition tonight at Spearfish High School at 5 o'clock, come support us!

When we get to the competition we have a scheduled warm up time for five minutes. After we warm up we finish getting ready for the competition; we fix our hair and do our make up and usually take some pictures. When the competition starts we wait until our turn and go perform our hearts out. Some of us have certain squads or dances that we make sure that we see. While we are waiting for awards to start we pretty much just eat and relax.

Stunting

I'm sure many people don't know what the term stunting is referring too. Stunting is my personal favorite part of cheerleading. In a stunt there is a flyer, usually two bases, and at least one spotter. The flyer is the one who goes up in the air. Bases hold the flyer's feet and may throw her up or just hold her at a certain heighth. The spotter helps get the flyer where she needs to be and hold the stunt together.

There are many different kinds of stunts. The most simple stunt we have done is called a prep; in a prep you hold the flyer at chest level. A full is the next highest leveled stunt; rather than holding the flyer at chest level you hold her above your head with your arms completely extended. Libs can be at either prep level or full level; in a lib the flyer has one foot in the bases hands and the other leg raised in a bent form. There are many different stunts where the bases share one foot and the flyers other leg can be in a variety of different positions. Tosses are the one stunt that the flyer literally flys in the air; as the flyer jumps into the bases hands the spotter and bases throw her up and catch her in a cradle (as if in a position of holding a baby).