I have gone through ten years of early mornings, long practices, and ponytails so tight my head hurts. Cheering for football games and competing are two totally different things. For football games we just cheer on the sidelines to hype up the crowd and get them excited. Competitions are all about cheer- there are no football players or game to focus on. These competitions are all about us and the hard work we put in at practice. We get 2 minutes and 30 seconds to give our all and for once the crowd is yelling and hyping us up. To me, competitions are the main and best part of cheer. However, competitions used to stop for Farmingdale once we reached 8th grade.

Luckily, this year our school started our first competition team. Before now Farmingdale High School has been one of the few high schools that didn’t compete. There were many reasons we could not compete, such as no practice space or time, and no equipment like pom poms and signs. All of these were stressful challenges we had to work through to get this team together. There is so much pressure to be successful as the first Dalers competition team; we don’t want anyone to regret putting this team together.   

This week is crunch time, practicing has become tougher and longer than ever. Cheer is not as easy or even as fun as someone would think. We put in the same amount or even more practice than other sports. There are injuries, blood, sweat, and tears every day. We take cheer as seriously as football players take football. Competitions are our chance to show everyone what we are made of and how hard we work. December ninth was the FHS debut competition at Clarke High School and we were hoping to make history.

Making history is exactly what we did. With only two competitions left now in the season we have won first place for the first three of them. Our goal is to remain undefeated, move up to a varsity level and compete at nationals. We are the first competition team Farmingdale High School has ever had and we are taking advantage of this opportunity to prove ourselves. We put in many hours of hard work at practice to remain on top and we don’t plan on stopping.