After a decade-long hiatus, the Oakville varsity cheer team is gearing up for their first competition season in about 10 years. With new leadership and fresh routines, the team will make their comeback when they take the mat in February for the state competition.
“We chose to compete because in years prior we did competition,” Austyn Schnur (12) said. “It was like 10 years ago they used to do competition pretty regularly, and then for some reason we just stopped doing it and everybody on the team wanted to start, so we started it back up.”
The topic of returning to competition had been coming up for a while with the team, but this year they finally felt as if they were ready to make it happen.
“For our competition tryouts, we had each girl learn the Band Chant and Timeout Cheer that we chose to use for competition. We gave the girls three days to learn these and had them perform in pairs in front of myself and Coach Vuylsteke (the other varsity coach),” Coach Savannah Forrester said. “We scored them based on their preparedness, motion sharpness, voice/inflection and their facials/energy. We are only allowed to have 20 cheerleaders on the mat to perform, but currently have a squad of 24, so we decided to have the girls tryout to give everyone an equal opportunity to make mat.”
Before tryouts, the varsity team had the opportunity to show off their skills at the Lindbergh Showcase in November.
“So the Lindbergh showcase was to understand how competitions work and what it feels like performing in front of like a huge crowd,” Julianne Tutwiler (12) said. “…We got two warm-up times and then we got one performance, and we had to wait for our category because there were a bunch of other teams there.”
With the showcase helping the team prepare for tryouts and competition, it also helped in hyping some team members up for the future of the season.
“The showcase made me very excited because I like performing and the feeling of performing in front of a crowd just got me even more excited for competition season,” Tutwiler said, “and knowing that I made the competition team, that was the best part so far.”
Preparing for competition can have its ups and downs, especially when this year’s team has never been able to compete before.
“It’s a lot more interactive and we have to work harder and flyers have to stretch more, so it’s very stressful,” Anastasia Mungle (12) said.
Although practices can be very stressful, there’s been a mix of emotions when preparing for the upcoming competitions.
“I’m really excited and kinda nervous,” Olivia Hennessy (12) said. “I hope we do well because sometimes there’s just things that we don’t hit, and I wanna make sure that we all hit them and be sharp with it as well.”
Competition season can be challenging with the hours of practice and pressure to perform at a higher level. Despite the difficulties that may come, some believe the team has shown that everyone there is committed to pushing themselves to succeed.
“You can definitely tell from just varsity and the competition squad, everybody wants to be there and puts in a lot more effort than just making varsity,” Schnur said. “…We do have a new rule with competition team if you don’t make it to two practices, you’re kicked off and one of the subs will sub in for you, and I feel like that just makes everybody on the team have to want to be there — it’s not just you’re there automatically.”
As the first competition draws near, the team prepares to make their return to the mat a memorable one.
“I feel great about the team competing this year. I think if there was ever a time for our program to start competing again, it would be now,” Forrester said. “This group of cheerleaders are determined and dedicated which makes prepping for competition much easier. They are extremely hard workers, and I can’t wait to watch them compete.”
