As spring approaches, so do spring sports, sparking excitement for the athletes who are ready to get playing. But for Gallatin’s cheer team, spring is hardly the start to their training. Over spring break the team’s hard work finally started paying off as Gallatin participated for their first year ever at Louistown’s annual cheer fest, and just in time to shed a little more light on GHS’s rather underappreciated athletes: The cheer team. 

Training year-round, yes during the summer too, the team has been working hard to prepare to make a name for themselves the only way they can, CheerFest. CheerFest was brought up about 15 years ago by a cheer coach in Lewistown, who was frustrated by the lack of opportunity for competition among the high school cheer teams in Montana. The competition is a great way for cheer teams across the state to show off their skills. 

Having attended the event last year as observers, the kids who’ve stuck around on GHS’s cheer team were ecstatic to participate this year, which meant lots of hard work. The team has been preparing since the summer to cheer like a welloiled machine. When asked about their strengths and weaknesses, Coach Logan said that “realistically everyone is a strong athlete in their own way,” and finding a role for everyone is like a “balancing act of certain skills.”

In order to have a balanced team there’s definitely necessary balance between all the positions. For example, the team cannot exist only of flyers, or only of bases. You need an even amount to create stunt groups that can perform on the next level. Speaking of next level stunts, the Raptors were able to use this valence to bring in stunts not seen in years at CheerFest, to take first place in the small coed division. For example, the Iron Cross.

In the history of CheerFest the Iron Cross had only been performed once before by Coach Logan’s team in his days at Choteau High School. It was the first time this pyramid was ever seen at Cheer Fest and it earned Choteau their own victory in their division. Coach Logan clearly kept this pyramid in mind throughout the years to bring it back to Gallatin High School as his “Secret Weapon’’ to win CheerFest. But what makes this pyramid so special as to win a competition? The simple matter of fact is the Iron Cross classifies as a tension pyramid. This means that if any part of the pyramid goes wrong the entire stunt will fail.

This team persevered through the difficulties of learning a full routine and new stunts and it definitely paid off with their victory. This likely can be credited to their strength according to Coach Logan as “their ability to show up even when there’s low energy.” The team didn’t have a student section, and not every single parent was there. You would think that with fewer parents and no student section this would allude to a calm environment, however, it was quite the opposite for the Raptors. 

To say the competition was chaotic would be an understatement. Upon arrival, the Raptors were met with a team practicing their routine full out and another behind them waiting for their own time on the mat. Chaos was to be expected with 15 different cheer, dance and stunt teams competing from around the state. But evidently this did not stop our Raptors as they completed their warm-ups on the mat and their first place winning routine without a single stunt dropped. The Raptors competed against Helena High Cheer and Capital JV Cheer.

The energy between teams was friendly, from waiting in lines to compete in the jump off, to words of encouragement before going on to compete. Even while waiting for awards, each and every team joined in doing timeless dances such as the Cha-Cha Slide, the Macarena, and the Cupid Shuffle. While waiting for the announcer to give out the awards for the AA Small Coed Division, the Raptors sat in a circle hand-in-hand showing the unity this team had always bore throughout the season in patience for their rightful first place. Of course, what is a cheer team without unity? In order to pull off the stunts seen throughout the year and in competition the team has to trust in one another, a flier must trust her bases and backspot to catch, and the bases and black spot must trust each other to all do their part to keep the flier in the air. This creates a unity in a team unlike any other.

Cheer is a growing sport to say the least, with competitions all over the world occurring just for cheerleaders. The sport has officially been acknowledged by The International Olympic Committee (IOC), Michigan, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, New Mexico, South Dakota, Alaska and Virginia as an official sport though it has not been within our own state as it still falls in the category of an activity under MHSA. However, in the USA, cheerleading has evolved to high standards, with prestigious competitions such as Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA) as well as Nationals and National Cheer Association (NCA). The sport has grown from just the cheering on of others to its own being entirely.

With the sport growing, Gallatin High’s Cheer team is growing as well. This truely amazing program will be holding tryouts on May 19th and 20th for the next season. For more information please visit the cheer team's Instagram @gallatinspirit or the team's Facebook page for the registration link. For additional questions feel free to email head coach Logan Wearly with the email coachlogan@gallatinspirit.com.