OPINION 

Norwood High School’s cheerleaders are often mainly known for cheering at football and basketball games. The biggest misconception made by many students at NHS is that this is all we do. 

Cheerleading is most definitely an athletic sport that requires just as much physical and mental exertion than other traditional sports.

In cheer there are five stunting positions. There are bases, backspots, flyers and front spots. The bases are in a quantity of two per stunting group. They hold the flyer’s feet or foot, throw and catch the flyers and provide movement under the stunt. Backspots have an important job and supply major stability to the stunt as well as catching the flyer if she were to fall. The flyer does tricks and body positions in the air and is also thrown up into the air. The front spots supply extra support to the stunt and help catch when the flyer is being thrown.

Just like every other sport here at Norwood High School, cheerleaders practice for two hours. During practice, we don't rah-rah and do cheers the entire time; we do things that require strength, cardio, and endurance.

At practice we start off with 10-15 minute warm-ups, then we go on to practicing our routine. In a typical routine, there are two stunt sequences, jumps, a cheer, tumbling, dance, and a pyramid which are multiple sequences of stunts connected together. 

The stunt sequences include girls being thrown at incredible heights, bases throwing girls coming down into their arms at full speed, flyers doing different moves at intense heights and even sometimes backspots getting landed on by flyers. A pyramid is similar to this; there are two to three girls in the air at a time and one girl in the middle doing flips and tricks while staying connected to the other girls as they are flying too.

Other than practices and games, there are also competitions that the cheerleaders participate in. These competitions can be really big with lots of competitors or fairly small depending on who's competing in your division for that certain competition. 

During these competitions, each team performs their routine which lasts for two minutes and thirty seconds. It seems like a short amount of time, however, it’s not easy. These routines go at a fast pace and every athlete has to keep the pace or else. It takes a lot of endurance to get through one of these routines, which becomes very tiring. 

It may be believed that cheerleaders do nothing but “cheer on the real sports” however each team puts a lot of dedication into their own routine which may not be seen or appreciated by the school. 

Nevertheless, if you’re ever curious about what the cheerleaders do and if you ever want to come out and support the team, competitions are usually held Sundays or Saturdays (sometimes both)  during the fall and winter seasons.