I have been cheering throughout all four years of high school. It has given me so many new opportunities, and I have gotten to meet many new people from it. One of my favorite things that I have gotten to do as a cheerleader is perform in the halftime show. We spend the whole year getting prepared for this performance. It’s a two minute and thirty second performance that we do at halftime of a boys’ basketball game. 

Getting prepared for this performance takes a lot of time and dedication. It’s something that takes us the whole season to perfect. We go to a camp at the beginning of the year that helps us put together a couple things for the halftime show. They start out by teaching us a couple counts to a dance that we can include into our performance. Then, they will also teach us different types of stunts, and pyramids that we can practice the whole year to be able to perform them. We take what we learn at camp and we use our practice time to get over it so we can get it right.  

The seniors have a lot of responsibility that comes with the halftime show. We get to decide dances, stunts, music and the formations that we will be in. The seniors and the coaches work together to make sure that all of this is getting done, and will be ready on time. We pick out the stunt groups that we think will be the best fit.  However, sometimes not everything goes to plan. This year only a couple weeks before the performance we had to change a major part. One of the cheerleaders was unable to be in it this year, but seniors talked to the coaches and we made up a plan that would work best. We decided that we were going to have one of our bases learn to become a flyer, and bring in a jr high cheerleader to take her spot. 

Once we figured out how to solve this problem all we had left to do was clean up the dances, and stunts. We would have as many practices as we could to take the time to fix little things that needed to be changed. After we get everything fixed we start doing fullouts. This is just when we perform the whole thing like we will on the actual day. 

Performing with my teammates the last four years is something I will never forget. It’s a bittersweet feeling knowing this is my last year to be able to perform the halftime show, but I wouldn’t want to change the last four years for anything.