“A football player comes out of nowhere and knocks two 2nd graders down,” Sr. Chloe Romans explained the events that had happened to her rocket cheerleaders on September 29 at West Ottawa’s Friday night home game.
Throughout the football season, the varsity cheerleaders get to coach elementary girls. One of the varsity games they get to show off their hard work coaching. When Romans was coaching her little cheerleaders, she noticed two of them get trampled by a large football player. The accident was not the football player’s fault but the fault of the lack of space on the sidelines.
Similar collisions are not unusual for the cheerleaders at the home stadium.
When West Ottawa’s new stadium was built, architects neglected to provide space for the cheerleaders. The small space that between the sideline and the wall is taken up by football players. Having a large team of football players would not be a problem if there was more room to fit both the cheerleaders and the football players.
The way the field is set up the cheerleaders are pushed up to the stadium wall and only seen by the students sitting in the front of the student section. If they take a few steps back, they are stepping on the field. The cheerleaders are only able to stand in two long rows. This leaves half of the cheerleaders cheering in front of no one. Approximately eight of the varsity cheerleaders actually cheer in front of the student section and the rest cheer to the brick wall in front of them.
During the first game of the season, cheerleaders decided to split between the underclassmen and upperclassmen. Since the lack of space and the large cheer team, the coaches had decided to try splitting up the team by having upperclassmen in front of the student section and the underclassmen on the concession side of the stadium.
“This is my first year on varsity and my first football game on varsity. So I had a hard time knowing all of the cheers because I just learned most of them,” Soph. Sayuri Farias said.
She wasn’t the only underclassmen that was struggling. Sayuri and her fellow underclassmen said that they would have benefited from the help of the upperclassmen. Obviously this was not a solution to the lack of space for the cheerleaders on the sidelines. This was one way they tried to make their tough situation better.
Instead of splitting up, the underclassmen decided they would rather cheer together as a team and cheer in front of no one. The cheerleaders stand in two lines that go across the student section. Only half of the cheerleaders actually cheer in front of the student section. The stands cut off and the cheerleaders on the far side cheer in front of no one.
“Maybe they didn’t consider the cheerleaders because some people don’t consider cheer a sport,” Jr. Maya Loveless said.
The cheerleaders work as hard as other athletes: three hour practices, intense conditioning, weight lifting.
The practices are what make it a sport. Many people who say cheer isn’t a sport only see the chants and peppy part of cheer. What they don’t see are the injuries, the tears, the mental frustration, and the physical strain it takes on the body.
“They don’t see repeating the routine full out until it hits and you’re so out of breath you feel like you’re going to collapse,” Jr. Jayla Frederickson said.
“If people were able to see the practices and not just the games then maybe we would be noticed more and stop being told our sport isn’t a real sport,” Loveless said.
Sideline cheer helps cheerleaders prepare for competitive cheer. It is a practice performance and with no space, leaving cheerleader to wonder who they are performing for.
