By Bryan Angeles Lopez, Staff Reporter
March, 2022
It was an early morning. Cheerleaders woke up as early as 4:00 a.m. to prepare their hair, makeup, and uniforms. They arrived at KAC at 7:00 to practice in the gym and finish their hair and makeup. They had to rework their entire choreography because team captain, sophomore Ruby Aviles, got injured the day before the competition. In addition, they had to borrow the boys’ soccer team’s bus due to complications with their bus and driver. Because of this, they arrived late to the competition at Hays High School and, if that wasn’t bad enough, they were the first to perform. The competition coordinators pushed back the competition to let them practice for twenty minutes and then they performed. Team members were proud of their performance considering they had to do everything last minute. Some team members slipped, but it was a good first performance. They were brought up on stage and had to kneel as they were presented their trophy, which was received by senior Asia Quiroz.
The cheer team originally started during the 2020-2021 school year. The sponsors for the team were Spanish teacher Dorianne Santiago, and English teacher James Hernandez. Since the team could not start practice during the lockdown, they started fundraising. Over Google Meets, they planned their first cheer season and talked to Coach Anthony Carrizales about organizing the team. Once the school year started they ironed out the final details and eventually started preparing for their season.
Coach Santiago had the following responses to our questions about the team.
When did the cheer team start?
Coach Santiago: We started during the lockdown in 2021, but we could only fundraise. That was the only big activity we could do as a group and we started as a club before we became a team, and a lot of the cheerleaders that started and worked so hard on the team are not here with us because they graduated, a lot of them were seniors and we started competing this year in 2022.
How many members are on your team?’
DS: Right now we have 11 team members and we have 9-12 graders. Our only senior is Asia and everyone else is 9th, 10th, and 11th graders.
Is it hard to get on the team?
DS: Well I would say you do have to be athletic to a certain point to become part of the team and I think also every year it’s going to change as the team gets better and grows, the application process and the tryout process will be more difficult. Right now I would say that there is a fee for the students to participate in the program because cheerleading is such an expensive sport. Actually when you try out and join that fee is to cover your uniform expenses so hopefully next year it will look a little different because next year we will be a team and not a club.
How was the competition?
DS: Well competitions, it’s hard. I mean all competitions are hard, all tournaments are hard but again, we’re a very inexperienced team and it takes a lot of work to put a number together. Our number has to be a minute and a half long and that sounds like such a short amount of time but that’s so long, and we had an injury like the day before the competition so that was pretty hard on the team. The person that got hurt was our main flier and since we’re only eleven people we didn’t have somebody that could come in for our main flier and we just didn’t have enough time to change the whole piece and we ended up having to cut half of it for competition. That was pretty hard but the half that we could present was very solid and strong and they ended up placing third place even though, you know, we had to cut half of our piece but it was bittersweet because even though we still placed in all the things we did put a lot of work into the stunts and the things we had prepared and the fact we couldn’t present them in competitions was hard on the team and the coaches.”
What is in the future for cheerleading?
DS: Well the future for us is becoming a class and a class period which means we are now part of the catalog for athletics and that is very exciting because I don’t think KAC has had a cheer team as part of the catalog its always been like an after school type of thing or a voluntary type of thing. In the future we want to compete in at least two competitions instead of one and also our goal is to have new tryouts and have a bigger team. We are looking forward to getting at least twenty people on the squad, at least that’s our goal for next year, and yeah we’re very excited. Honestly, we’re just excited and happy to see what the future holds for this program but we’re sure that it’s gonna grow a lot and we’re gonna be the best, you’ll see.
She also mentioned that cheerleading tryouts will be before school ends and it is open to everyone who wants to try out and try the class. “It would be a great honor for anyone that wants to come and be a cardinal cheerleader to come out and try out, and we’re also gonna have a clinic so you come ready for the tryouts. We’re going to have a two-day clinic ending with a tryout and so that will give people more confidence who have never done cheer before, you can come to the clinic and learn what we are gonna be doing in the tryouts and then do the thing.”
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