Winter Cheer is jumping back into competitions
By Catherine Brown, Photo Editor

The leaves are falling and the temperature is dropping, and with this changing of seasons comes a new season of winter sports. Winter cheer joins the lineup with a group of both returning and new members.

For the past few years, the cheer team at the high school has been comprised solely of girls, and as such competition was limited to just girls. This season, however, there are three boys ready to jump into the season.

“I decided to join cheer with my friend Rowan because we thought it would be kind of funny and there haven’t been guys on the team in a long time,” junior Kolo Enson-Overstreet said. “Some people encouraged us to join, which … pushed us to follow through. We both have some experience in acrobatics so we also thought that would be a good addition to the repertoire.”

All three boys on the team this year are base position alongside some of the girls. The remainder of the cheerleaders are fliers or spotters.

“I didn’t really have a preference, but knew I would be a base due to being bigger than most others,” said junior Rowan Shorader.

Still, with so few boys on the team, cheerleading is still a female-dominated sport. The team hopes to change this in the coming seasons.

“There’s only three boys on the team, and we usually have none,” junior Emma Barker said. “That’s enough, but we’d like to have more for next year.”

With the new team, the girls had to make some adjustments to their cheers, and to their competition rules. Both aforementioned boys will be attending competitions this year.

“Having the guys is awesome, I think that anytime you have just new faces, new ideas, new people on a team it just adds to it,” Barker said. “It’s easy when you have the same people over and over you just get in your ways. So having the guys it just makes us think about the whole thing differently … In terms of what we can do for stunting makes it more dynamic and do stunts that are a little but harder to do without guys.
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The team is excited about competing this year, and will be busy preparing for competitions while also cheering at winter sports, like wrestling and basketball, and at pep assemblies. Even though the cheer competitions will not be held on Vashon, information about the events can be found at Harbor Cheer Fest in Gig Harbor for those interested in attending, watching, and supporting the hard-working cheerleaders.