After long hours of physically and mentally preparing, the Warren Central cheerleaders are finally ready to have a successful season. Not everyone considers cheer a sport, but according to these athletes cheer is just about as hard as any other sport.
Cheerleading takes a lot of physical and mental work. These cheerleaders have to mentally prepare themselves and physically be in shape in order to do certain things.
“Cheer is more physical than most sports,” senior Dominique Cornett said. “It takes a lot of yelling and tightening our muscles for stunts.”
However, to these athletes it's much more than just cheerleading. As a cheerleader, to them, it takes a lot of commitment and dedication to do certain stunts and being in front of a crowd full of tons of people.
“It just takes a lot of preparation behind the scenes and not all the time is it easy,” junior Tayjayh Johnson said.
Many cheerleaders feel as if they have a lot on their plate when it comes to stunts. They hold other athletes in their hands and have to make sure they don’t fall. To them, that is a very important and difficult job because one little slip up and a disaster can happen.
"I’m very excited for this season, but I also have to be mentally aware since we as cheerleaders hold another person's life in our hands,” senior Ca’Marrah Mason said.
According to these cheerleaders, they work just as hard as everyone else. Still, the International Olympics Committee recently decided that competitive cheer will not be included in the 2028 Olympics, even though the sport was given recognition by the committee in 2021. Some of the cheerleaders at Warren feel more understanding instead of angry that the Olympics didn’t accept cheer as a sport.
“I feel more compassionate than others because not everyone around the world has cheer or does cheerleading in the same type of style, but I would be interested to see what others’ cultural cheer is like,” Mason said.
Coach Evann Smith is trying to get a “Stunt Program” started at Warren Central. This stunt program will be something like two cheer teams going head to head doing stunts and one ends up the winner. According to her, it is similar to a basketball and football game, just with cheerleaders instead. They will be competing outside of Warren, meaning they will be just going as a regular team that isn’t carrying the Warren Central’s Lady Warriors name. This will happen Oct. 19 and Nov. 17.
For cheerleading, they don’t wait to start practicing; they immediately start practicing when spring hits and practice all summer until the season starts. To these cheerleaders and the coach, it takes hard work and dedication along with a lot of time commitment because they still have to keep their grades up.
“It’s time consuming and takes a lot of determination, but if you have commitment and enjoy the sport then it's easy,” Coach Smith said.