Article by Miriam Hagg, 
On The Edge Student Reporter
Edgewood Middle School

She jumps gracefully into the pyramid as her friends start the chant. She stands up straight, smiling brightly, her eyes glimmering with the joy that she gets when she cheers. As the crowd goes wild for the amazing field goal that one of the football players just made, she is gently lifted down to the beautifully manicured grass. As they continue cheering, she is a star, flipping around and doing a seemingly endless number of cartwheels, round offs and back handsprings.

This is just one example of some of the amazing things cheerleaders do at every football game. However, we never really think about the effort they put in to achieving these major feats. Cheerleaders practice for 2-4 days a week on average, with competitions and also basketball games, that adds up to many hours of spirited cheerleading.

Mrs. Beer, the new cheerleading coach at Edgewood stated that the cheerleaders here, “… work hard to learn new cheers, chants, stunts and tumbling in order to create an energetic and fun atmosphere at Edgewood sporting events.’’

So why do cheerleaders put all this effort into cheerleading? We interviewed Katie, a cheerleader here at Edgewood, to find out.

Katie stated that cheerleading teaches her about teamwork and good attitudes. A large part of cheerleading is having a good attitude of kindness, perseverance and respectfulness. Cheerleaders need to be kind to each other after a conflict, or else whole cheers can fall apart.

Perseverance is demonstrated when a cheerleader can get up off of the muddy grass with an aching arm, her outfit looking terrible, and say, “I’m still going to cheer and I am still going to love doing it.”

Lastly, respectfulness can be seen when a cheerleader accidentally drops another and they still can be nice to each other.

Mrs. Beer told us that her improvements to the cheerleading squad will be to encourage the cheerleaders to represent Edgewood wherever they go with a positive attitude and school spirit. So, next time you see a cheerleader, think of all the effort, positive attitude and school spirit that they have contributed to a sport that they love.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The article above was selected from the Edgewood Middle School student written magazine On The Edge. Future articles will be selected from the magazine and will be featured on StaceyPageOnline.com. Topics will include, but are not limited to, sports, community news, school news, current events and entertainment news. Please contact Alyssa Richardson at [email protected] with questions.)