It can be hard balancing school work and sports, and especially doing two sports all at the same time can be a struggle. Being on two cheer teams has its perks but can be hard to juggle.

Here at Wayne Hills, the football cheer program has been around for over 20 years and has consisted of talented girls throughout the years. The girls who participate in football cheer perform their routine at halftime of the games on Fridays. During the week, there are practices where the girls work on fixing parts of the routine that don’t look so great, going over the routine and making sure it looks perfect, practicing stunts and tumbling, and reviewing sideline cheers. Practices are usually Tuesday, Thursdays, and Fridays after school before the game.  Football cheer is different from competition cheer here at Hills. In football cheer, you are standing on the sidelines and cheering on the players. You even use pom poms and  have megaphones. Competition cheer is not like that, though. 

Competition cheer is a Wayne Hills sport, but not held here at Wayne Hills. The practices for competition cheer is held at an outside gym called Just Cheer. Practices are held on Mondays from 3:15 to 5:15 p.m. Depending on how practice went on Monday, Saturday practices are sometimes scheduled. Competitive Cheers compete in many competitions starting in December. Their season runs through February where the girls compete at ESPN Wide World of Sports, in Orlando, Florida. 

What’s great about doing both football cheer and comp cheer is that you can bond with girls and create long lasting friendships. Not only are bonds created, but you learn new skills and cause use the skills that you learn in comp cheer for the next football cheer season. At comp cheer practice, the girls are pushed harder and taught harder skills then at football cheer practice. Because the girls compete, the competition cheer routine has to be more technical and difficult compared to the football cheer halftime routine.

The girls who do both, competition cheer and football cheer, love both equally and have lots of fun doing it. Both cheer teams give the girls the opportunity to test out new skills and work harder to improve. Although it seems all fun and games, it can be hard balancing both teams and life outside of cheerleading. School is important for all of the girls and staying on top of school work is most important.

“I think it comes down to having good time management skills. Just keeping track of when all your assignments are due is important. It’s nice that practices aren’t on the same days because then you don’t feel like you have no time to do any school work,” senior Zoe Silverman commented about how she balances being on both cheer teams and her school work. Your social life is another thing that gets pushed to the side a little when being on these two cheer teams. Practices take up a lot of time and it may become harder to hangout with friends.

“Practices for competition cheer are on different days than football cheer, both end around the same time though. I usually do homework after practices. Its nice having them on different days because I have more time to focus on school and see my friends. Once football cheer stops and comp cheer picks up that is my main focus,” senior Kayla Sanchez told us how she feels about balancing cheer, school work, and her social life.

It may seem like a lot, being on a football cheer team and a competition cheer team at the same time, practicing twice as much, and then getting all your school assignments done, but it is about the memories for these girls. Getting the chance to do what they love makes everything seem easy.