Flipping, chanting, and cheering under the bright stadium lights, a regular Friday night for cheerleaders at Brecksville Broadview Heights High School. Once again, the cheer team is bringing the heat in their annual cheer competition, taking place in the main gym on Monday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m.

Never been to a cheer competition? Not convinced you should go? A member of the cheer team, Ella Rundo, junior, who has been a part of the cheer team for 2 years, explains, “The cheer competitors,  which consist of squads from many different schools in our suburban league, make routines containing a cheer, chant, dance, and tumbling. We also use poms, signs, and sometimes flags. The competition gets very intense as people are trying to focus on the routine while the atmosphere seems so hyped because people want to win of course.”

Maya Meilander, a senior, who has been cheering for 13 years, goes on to say, “The schools perform their routine, and cheer judges score our routine. The school with the highest score wins!”

It is a very fast-paced competition with nine different schools competing:  The girls will need to hype the crowd of students to help cheer with them and roar out school spirit chants.

“We feed off the enthusiasm of the crowd,” says Coach Michelle Hoy. Participation is a part of the scoring process, so students are a huge determining factor on whether the cheer team takes home the big win.

Tumbling, jumping, and flipping, while chanting are no easy tasks.   Combine these things with the memorization process of routines.

There are stereotypes:  Cheer is “easy”, “unnecessary”, or “not a real sport”. These statements are arguable. Cheerleading takes a lot of physical and mental skill. It takes stamina, flexibility, and skill, along with memorization and hard work. It’s not something everyone can do.  Don’t believe it?  Just for kicks, try it.

Alyssa Guardaro, junior, who has been cheering for 5 years uses a technique.  She explains, “Repeating the cheers and chants over and over again with the team line by line, while also matching the cheer words to motions, helps me memorize each motion in a particular order.”

The coach of the Brecksville Broadview Heights cheer squad is Coach Hoy. This is year 33, as a coach at BBHHS, and she was a cheerleader when she was younger. Hoy says, “The girls have worked super hard creating & choreographing the material that we will use the night of the competition. Other schools pay someone to put this t

ogether for them – this is something we have never done.”

The cheer team surely never disappoints at the annual cheer competition, with the team never placing below second place.

The team is always making sure to bring the hype wherever they go. Once the cheer competition is over, the new season of winter sports will begin, and many members of the team will go on to cheer at winter sports or compete at other cheer clubs.

Meilander says, “I think, right now, our team is a little stressed about the competition, so my only critique would be to tell everyone to relax and to be confident as we are going to have a great competition performance.”

Support the school’s cheer team by chanting along with them as they represent the school proudly.  Adult tickets are $8 and students are only $4.