By Madeleine Dumais, Social Media and Distribution Editor
During the football game on Oct. 17, the cheer team was joined by 33 elementary school girls. The team does this every year as both a fundraiser and as a way to include community members, both old and young, in the football games.
“It was a nice fundraiser for us, but the other purpose of it is a community building thing,” said cheer coach Carolyn Zike. “It’s a nice way to get people interested in cheerleading and thinking about cheerleading as a sport they might participate in someday.”
This program has also been a fundraiser for many years.
“We charge $40, but out of that we paid for a t-shirt, they each got their own pirate pals t-shirt, and we bought them a really nice set of pom poms to keep,” said Zike. “About half of the cost went towards buying the [items].”
The team really wants to be sure that anyone who wants to participate in the program can. They offer $20 off of the fee for those who are on free or reduced lunch.
“I want to say we had about eight families who accessed the camp who are on free or reduced lunch,” said Zike. “We feel really good about that.”
At practice the girls all warmed up together and then the older girls taught the younger ones cheers and play games. The team engaged the campers in fun competitions and games.
“We did voice activities, we would do little competitions to see who was louder,” said senior Kira Rabourn. “We did little drills to help them with cheer and we played ‘Simon Says.’”
The team taught the younger girls five cheers including, ‘boom dynamite’ and ‘pirate power,’ which they then performed during the first quarter of the football game, Monday, Oct. 17, alongside their new cheer team buddies.