Alder’s competition cheer season ended on a high note, winning their third OASSA state championship. This is their first time winning since 2009. 

Jason Thompson, an athletic trainer intern for Alder and fan says, “I was hyped for them, that was awesome… It’s been a while [since they’ve won] so it was pretty surreal to see them win.”

Throughout the year, competition cheer begins in August but cheerleaders must perform in either football or basketball cheerleading to be able to do competition. 

“We start competition cheer in August, but over the summer, we start doing stuff too, but like it really starts in August, and the girls that do competition cheer, we all at least do basketball or football cheer too, so it overlaps,” says cheerleader and junior Alaina Reynolds. “But we practice two to three times a week, and then like the month before like the competition, we practice three times a week.”

Junior Abbey Lewis, another cheer team member, thinks this was one of their best seasons. 

She says, “I felt really accomplished and I feel like my team really deserved it this year because we tried really hard all season.”

Thompson says that pre-competition anxiety can affect some players, but there are some things that can help.

“Think through your routine and think about what goes where in terms of music and all that, but you don’t want to overthink it, because if you get too caught up in your own head, you’re much more likely to mess up.”

Lewis deals with pre-competition worries but works through it.

“I try to have the most fun with it that I can because it is really nerve-wracking before we go out, but I just look at all my teammates and I try to get excited.”

Reynolds was also pretty nervous throughout the competition. 

“The team that is like our rivals is Steubenville, and they’ve won for like the past couple years, so we were nervous. I can say I was very nervous… after we performed, we all felt good, but like anything could have happened.”

Lewis appreciates her coaches for always keeping them at their best even when times were hard.

“Some practices were hard, but overall they were really fun and our coaches kept it really interesting.”

Overall Reynolds was content on how her season ended.

“When we won states, I’d probably say that’s the happiest I’ve seen anybody on the cheer team just because states is like a big thing, and we haven’t won states in years, and everybody was so happy.” 

She also was happy with her coaches as well. “We had our new cheer coach, Kaylee, and she’s helped us a lot.”