Cheerleaders: the other high school athletes

ROYAL CITY - In Royal football is everything. Every Friday the entire town is at the field supporting the team.

However, there is one aspect of the football experience that may not be fully appreciated nor even entirely acknowledged. Cheerleading is not usually recognized as a sport, probably because there are no winning or losing teams.

That does not make cheerleaders any less athletic than other athletes in other sports. Cheerleaders practice every day for two hours after school. They work constantly perfecting their arm movements, voices and stunts.

"Often times after practice many of the cheerleaders have sore biceps and triceps," cheer co-captain Bailey Workinger said. "The team must be loud enough to overpower the crowd as well as the game."

To do this, cheerleaders must strengthen the diaphragm and learn to use it for proper breathing. If a cheerleader uses her throat to yell, she won't be loud for long, and her throat will hurt by the second quarter.

"But if she uses her diaphragm she will be louder and save her throat from being damaged," team member Ali Rodriguez said. "I learned the hard way. I could barely talk the next morning after my first practice."

The Royal football cheer squad started stunting a few years ago. Stunting makes cheerleading dangerous. A fall from the top of a stunt can cause some serious damage.

"I turned an ankle, and it hurt for two weeks, but I kept on cheerleading, just like a hurt football player," Lauren Pratt said.

So you might wonder why the current 12 girls wished to be cheerleaders. They had various reasons, mostly because it's fun and important and just right for some girls.

"Cheerleading is the only sport that fits my loud, peppy personality, and I wanted to support the football team," Workinger said.

Khrystal Spalding is defying the odds. A plus-size girl, she's out to change the face of the stereotypical cheerleader.

"I wanted to change the way people see cheerleaders," she said. "I wanted to show them that a cheerleader does not have to be tiny and prove wrong all those people that said I could not be a cheerleader."

The other girls simply wanted to encourage school spirit. The entire squad agreed that, when they were little girls, they loved the cheerleaders, and that was what inspired them to try out for the squad.

"The cheerleaders were my favorite part of the football games. It looked like so much fun," Melany Arroyo said.

First time cheerleader Marleen Martinez added: "I always tried to do the cheers with the cheerleaders in the stands. They looked like they were having so much fun that I decided to try out."

The ultimate job of a cheer squad is to support the football (or basketball) team and get the crowd behind the boys so that they are encouraged to do what they do best and dominate on the field.