As someone who has cheered since the age of three, it becomes more difficult to incorporate cheer in to a busy schedule. I have had many pros and cons with following through with it and here are some main reasons for both sides.

To begin with the pros, the coaches do a great job of keeping everyone in line. What I mean by that is every one cheerleader always is willing to be present and engaged with what is going on. Every one follow what the coaches say to do and that helps us to improve.

Next, each person focuses on their strong points and their weak points and figure out what they need to do in order to be better. Personally, I find joy in doing jumps and tumbling. Those are my two stronger points when it comes to cheering. I would say that I am well at stretching and taking the time out of my days to have a good 5-10 minute stretch.

Everyone has their own highs and lows when it comes to cheering and that just happens to be two of my higher up favorites.

Another pro is, we put time and good effort into our practices. We divide into our squads and work together as a team to make our squads stronger and help to critique anything that needs a little extra assistance. At the end, we show each squad what we have worked on and usually we have to do it again due to coaches asking us to. That does not prove that we are not good enough, but it just tells us that we know we can do better.

Moving on to the cons, it is very time consuming. As someone who as a job and a parent who also lives in Kentucky, it gets very hard to add in 2 practices and then 2-3 games when basketball season occurs. It leaves out time I could be spending with my family and friends. Yes, there are people I cheer with that I talk to and I am friends with but we are not on the same team which makes it difficult to make plans and hang out.

Another con is, after a while it tends to become really upsetting because people get frustrated when we have to constantly have to redo things. You would think that after a whole season if not half a season we would have things down, but that is not always the case because after a while we tend to get tired and overwhelmed with a lot of things aside from cheerleading and we get over all done.

Lastly, being a cheerleader for both seasons is a good thing because of getting things done and representing the school. But, it is also hard at times and it becomes a harder thing to continue with.