At the homecoming game Sept. 13, the St. Louis Cheer team of 2024 performed its homecoming show during the halftime break.
Homecoming brings in the most people to watch a game, which means this is the performance being watched by the most people. That means practicing and perfecting to be ready for something that big. The time spent together makes a team into a family.
Senior Kaydence Heiden said her experience with the preparation was, “like any other performance. Although this is my first year cheering for the high school, this team has become like a family to me which has made our practice so much more enjoyable and fun than it would be if we were just cheerleaders there to cheer on our football players. We definitely worked hard on the performance and spent some of our time goofing off even though we were supposed to be practicing.”
A performance is nerve racking as all the eyes are on the ones performing. However, when it comes down to it, the fear of someone seeing the mistakes made is all in one’s head and not a lot of people actually realize someone made a mistake. The viewers don’t know the routine so they wouldn’t know what was and wasn’t meant to happen.
Sophomore Bryce Buchanan says he was most nervous because he, “didn’t think we would hit every stunt.” Getting every stunt right is a must to make a performance work. Even if the crowd doesn’t know that something was missed, the personal turmoil of messing up can be overwhelming. The cheer team’s performance was amazing and entertained the crowd with the team’s hard work.
The next time the cheer team will next be seen is Oct. 11. The team will be there to hype up the crowd and cheer on the football team.
