Next Year’s Cheerleading Teams Announced

Cheerleaders dance to “Hey Baby” at home basketball game.

Autumn Mock, Features Editor
March 10, 2015

While this year’s cheer season isn’t quite over, cheer tryouts have already taken place for the 2015-2016 team. The room was full of nervous jitters and last minute practicing as the time before tryouts was ticking away.

This year, the girls were thrown for a loop as the tryout format was not the same as previous years. Instead of waking up early Saturday morning to learn the entirety of the tryout material, a cheer, two chants, and a dance, and then performing the material that same afternoon in front of the judges, the cheer program decided to post videos of the tryout material online March 1 so the girls could learn it on their own time and then have tryouts after school on March 13.

“I like [the new tryout process] a lot because instead of like the previous years, coming in and not being prepared, not knowing what you’re doing, you actually know the material and have enough time to practice it on your own,” junior Alora Cain said. “I think that can show your dedication a lot better.”

The location of the tryouts is also different. In the past, tryouts were held in the auxiliary, stage, and main gym, but this year, the brief clinic, held right after school, was in the auxiliary gym and the actual tryouts were held in various social studies classrooms.

The decision on teams after cheer tryouts has always been a fairly speedy process, and this year the girls were only put through the dreaded wait for two hours after tryouts ended.

“It was very scary and nerve wracking,” sophomore Alissa Morales said. “I’m not a very patient person, so I literally sat there with my phone refreshing the website nonstop. I was just very anxious to see if my hard work really had paid off.”

The results were posted on the South Cheer website around 8:30 p.m. While all teams have a decent amount of girls on them, the varsity squad will be slightly smaller than it was this year, containing 20 people instead of 26. Also, for the third year now, two incoming freshmen made the varsity squad.

“I feel very honored and excited to what happens working with upperclassmen,” 8th grader Bergen Cooper said.

Another difference between this year and past years is that since the results were posted so late, the girls did not go back to the school once the results were posted to get sized for uniforms, meet the new team, and announce captains. Even though there has been tons of changes to the cheer program’s tryout process, the program has still acquired extremely strong and adequate teams to make next year successful.

The 2015-2016 cheerleading teams:

Varsity:

Mindy Absher

Anna Audley

Katie Ball

Alora Cain

Leslie Cobos

Bergen Cooper

Rachel Dukes

Emma Elliott

Brittany Foster

Shelby Manford