Months away, cheer begins to prepare for UIL

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  • Cheerleaders start to prepare for their UIL competition. The girls remain social distances, unless stunting.

  • The first of many social gatherings set for students to attend this fall, performances at Redhawk Rally bring spirit to students and families.

  • Having over 40 girls trying to earn a spot to compete at UIL, the coaches had a tough session to make. The coaching staff watched the girls for multiple weeks before making a decision.

  • Even with football season going on, and basketball season just around the corner the cheer team gets ready for their own competition.

  • With most sporting events lasting no layer than 3 hours, the UIL competition is a 12 hour day. “It includes waking up to get ready, hair, makeup, uniform, then heading to school to get on the bus and head to the location of the competition,” Eder said.

Preparation is underway for the UIL cheer competition in January with the Redhawks squad hoping for a somewhat ‘normal’ competition after an already delayed start to the season.

The UIL team results were recently announced and after weeks of preparation, the team is ready to finally begin practicing and are already hard at work.

“Tryouts for UIL are a couple weeks long,” JV cheerleader sophomore Kennedy Eder said via text. “Since the day a cheerleader makes the team, they are being evaluated for UIL. The coaches are watching us for jumps, technique, motions, tumbling, etc. We then have official tryouts, where we show off three of our jumps, and the UIL fight song that we will be performing, either in smaller groups or in squads.”

Out of 41 Redhawk cheerleaders throughout the program, from freshmen to seniors, 28 made the UIL team.

Freshman coach Callie Nelson feels that after weeks of watching the squad, she, along with the other coaching staff, was able to make the best decision possible to select the strongest team possible.

“We took about two to three weeks to watch the cheerleaders in class and make mental notes of their skill level and performance style,” Nelson said via email. “We had one official day where we judged each girl’s jumps, motions, and spirit in order to score and choose the most appropriate team.”

Out of the five other freshmen who made the team this year, freshman Malia Willingham is excited to experience the competition for the first time with the squad and help encourage her team.

“This will be my third year participating in school cheer,” Willingham said via text. “I did middle school cheer in 7th and 8th grade and now I’m in cheer freshman year. Being one of the few freshmen on the UIL team has been a little scary but mainly exciting. Everyone is so helpful and encouraging and I feel like we are going to do really good.”

The UIL state competition usually entails a series of competitions with individual scores that when averaged together determine a team’s final score and placement.

“A typical UIL Competition usually is a 12 hour day,” Eder said. “It includes waking up to get ready, hair, makeup, uniform, then heading to school to get on the bus and head to the location of the competition. We finish getting ready and then start to practice and get ready for prelims. Once we perform in prelims, we wait for results to see if we advance to finals.”

However, this year due to COVID-19, the competition will look slightly different only requiring each squad to perform once before finals.

“UIL State looks a little different this year due to COVID, but the overall process is still pretty similar,” Nelson said. “Each team will perform and be judged on crowd leading, which is usually a cheer mixed with some stunts and standing tumbling, the school fight song, and a band chant.  These three areas are judged on overall skill, look, and execution.  Instead of doing each performance individually like normal, we are doing one continuous performance from start to end as they would normally do in the finals.”

Though the competition will be a little different than in the past, the team is still excited for an opportunity to compete altogether and are determined to give it their all.

“This will be my first year going to the UIL competition, but it has been fun to watch the girls learn and challenge themselves in class,” Nelson said. “I’m excited to see how the performance as a whole turns out.”