With OHS cheerleading tryouts rapidly approaching April 3-6, returning team members are preparing to perform their best.

This year, tryouts are broken down into different skill categories and for each category team members earn points that will factor into their overall score. 

“There’s a bunch of different aspects,” Maddy Jonas (11) said. “You have jumps, tumbling, dancing, cheering, chanting and stunting.”

Though there are many facets to the tryouts, one seems to reign over the rest. 

“Stunts are worth more this year,” Alexa Hallsten (11) said. 

This change is not lost on the girls. 

“Stunting is the most stressful. It’s what everyone’s preparing for right now,” Jonas said. “We have open gyms for stunting on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

With the high stress level, these open gyms have proved beneficial to a number of the cheerleaders. 

“I go to as many clinics as I can,” Taylor Beranek (11) said. “I also work with my group and practice at home. That’s really important—to practice at home.”

This pressure to practice, however, isn’t quite the same as the pressure other student athletes feel. 

“Cheer is one of the only sports in the school where our own coaches don’t pick who they want. We have judges judge us,” Jonas said. “The coach doesn’t get to see the score until the very end of tryouts, and that’s how they determine who gets put on what team.”

Due to this, tryouts loom over much of the cheer team. 

“For me, it’s quite a big deal because I would like to be on varsity my senior year…” Beranek said. “I feel like it’s really nerve-racking for almost everyone.”

Similar to Beranek, other cheer members are feeling the pressure to earn their place on the team.  

“They’re a huge deal,” Hallsten said. “I feel like anyone can get cut this year. Anyone can get dropped down to a lower team. I think a lot more is at stake this year than last year….”

Despite the anxiety the tryouts are bringing, the girls aren’t new to the scene and know how to take some steps to ground themselves. 

“For my stunt group, we take a big deep breath in and out before we do our stunt to calm us down,” Hallsten said. “[We prepare ourselves by] just reviewing it, making sure we know the material and trusting in ourselves.”

In addition to trusting in themselves, the girls have learned to lean on each other for support. 

“We really hype each other up,” Jonas said. “We know what we can do, our coaches know what we can do and we just go out there and try our best.”