At football games, the Redhawks cheerleaders perform to raise school spirit. But Saturday at Independence High School from 6:30-8:30 p.m., all Frisco ISD cheer squads are taking center stage at the Frisco ISD Cheer Showcase in preparation for January’s UIL competition
“It allows all the high schools to come together and showcase those particular routines that they’re taking to competition in January,” head coach Kandy Stevens said. “They have a set of judges that come in and provide them feedback, so it gives them the opportunity to come back, work on those corrections, and make those changes before the real deal.”
Besides allowing students to receive input from judges, the showcase offers an overall valuable experience – it quells stress about the greater UIL competition and sheds light on aspects of the performance that could be improved.
“We’ve never not come back and made some changes,” Stevens said. “Even just from a coaching standpoint you look at something and you’re like ‘That didn’t go as well on the mat as I thought it would.’ So, we come back and change it. It’s [also] important for them to get their nerves out [and] put that uniform on, do that routine from beginning to end, and just perform it full out.”
According to Stevens, one of the biggest challenges of preparing for the showcase has been bringing students with different roles and niches into one cohesive team.
“We combine cheerleaders from all three of [our] programs and that makes our UIL team,” Stevens said. “So it’s girls working with people from different teams. That’s probably one of the skills they have to develop, just getting used to different people [and] different stunting and stuff. [For example], when you’ve got a freshmen working with seniors, there’s a difference in ability levels, so we have to even those out.”
In addition to working with students, head captains Carsyn Bianchin and Malia Willingham have taken it upon themselves to work out the kinks in their team’s performance where they can.
“Me and the other captain I work with try to plan what will work best for our team regarding each of the different parts,” head captain senior Carsyn Bianchin said. “We’ll work through the motions to make sure that whenever we’re performing it’s uniform. So we just set aside different times of the day where we can work on that to make it as perfect as we can get it for the showoff next week.”
The UIL competition consists of three parts: a band chant, a cheer, and a fight song – but cheer captain senior Malia Willingham has a personal favorite.
“I really like the band chant just because the cheer and fight song, they’re kind of always the same structure, but with the band chant we do something different every year,” Willingham said. “So, like, the music would change every year and the motions and everything we do would be completely different, so I just like doing something new and unique.”
Though stakes are high, junior Carlie Schroeder has faith in her team.
“I think this [competition] is particularly special because our teams are more bonded, so that just makes us look better, do better, and work harder,” she said.
