By Brandyn Huynh
Despite not being officially recognized as a sport by the NCAA (Division I Football Subdivision), the MHS Cheer Team broke those standards by officially making its debut as a sport this year. The team converted to practice over Zoom rather than hosting in-person meetings.
“Before the pandemic, we spent a total of three hours at practice, and four and a half hours on game day for football season,” cheer team Head Captain Iris Plingu said. The cheer team regularly held practices involving sets of high-intensity exercises for hours and ran an entire mile before every practice, Plingu added.
While there are always some who will not consider cheer a sport, Co-Captain Megan Edusada said cheerleading should not be compared to other sports. “Cheerleaders have worked harder to prove to our peers we are athletes,” Edusada said. Cheer has earned a place in sports this year by working twice as hard to be taken seriously as other sports, she added.
Cheer team Co-Captain Sarah Suarez said that people are reluctant to consider cheerleading as a “sport” because of the stereotypes in movies. “The way cheerleaders are represented in the movies is so wrong. A lot of the time, they are looked at as stuck up, annoying girls, who just yell,” Suarez said. She added that there is much work that goes into perfecting cheers, like learning fifty different cheers on top of memorizing dances.
In addition, there is a lot of leadership that goes into cheerleading, just like any other sport, Plingu said. “To make the dream work, all the girls use dedication and communication to ensure we’re all coordinated during our performances,” Plingu said.
Moving forward, the MHS cheer team will continue their weekly practices over Zoom by working with trainers for intense workouts and reviewing different cheers on their own time, said Iris Plingu.