The biggest football game of the year, Milkcan, happened last Friday at Don Lugo. While the football team was aggressively playing and scoring touchdowns, the Don Lugo Cheer Team was on the sidelines cheering, stunting and interacting with the crowd putting time and effort into keeping the crowds morale up. The Don Lugo Cheer Team keeps on going no matter what challenges they come across and although they currently don’t have a coach, the three captains are able to plan and execute each cheer performance beautifully. Although the crowd sees the team cheering, flipping and performing between quarters, what spectators don’t get to see is all the work that they put into each individual cheer performance, or the issues that they run into along the way.

Despite always having smiles on their faces, cheerleaders face many hardships. Cheerleaders around the globe work tremendously hard, yet their sport still isn’t considered a “real sport”. USAcheer.org reads,”USA Cheer believes that Traditional Cheerleading is most appropriately governed as a student activity, not an interscholastic varsity sport.” Despite this our Don Lugo Cheer Team practices 3 times a week while cheering every Thursday and Friday for the football games, keeping the crowd entertained and team spirit up.

Cheerleaders face the challenge of having to stay positive all the time. As a cheerleader, most people assume that you feel enthusiastic and confident all the time, but that’s not always the case. Varsity co-captain Allena Katherman remarks, “As a cheerleader everyone always expects you to be happy and positive all the time but I’m only human and have days where it can be hard to be positive and keep cheering when others around you are negative and have already given up or make comments about our team.” 

Cheerleaders have hard days too and it can be especially challenging when the team they’re cheering for is losing. The crowd might be judging them or making pessimistic remarks which can make it difficult to keep on smiling, but we all must remain positive like the cheerleaders and keep supporting the team until the very end. Milkcan is a great example of this as even though the crowd was feeling a little gloomy, our Don Lugo Cheer Team gave it their all and kept on performing. Varsity co-captain Brooke Graves states, “We try to have as much fun as we can and keep cheering even if the team is losing. What helps us is trying to interact with the crowd and the student section so they can give us some energy too. We try to throw up stunts to entertain the crowd and do more interactive cheers as well to keep our energy up.”

All in all, the Don Lugo cheerleaders push themselves just as hard as any other sports team performing at every rally and all of the biggest games at Don Lugo. They deserve just as much recognition for their efforts as the other sports teams at Don Lugo. They keep the team spirit high, and build the audience back up when they’re feeling low. Even when they struggle, they stay resilient and continue giving it their all.