Cheer squad earns high rating at summer camps

The Revere High School Football Cheerleading team began their season with high accolades at a summer camp, starting with great attitudes ready to support the Revere High School Football team.

Cheerleading began with tryouts in May. Once Revere High School’s head cheer coach Kelly Staats determined the members of each squad, practice commenced. The three squads—freshman, JV and Varsity—then attended Cheer Ohio, a four day training camp at Denison University in Granville of Ohio. Camp instructors trained squads from various schools with chants, cheers and dances in a limited period of time, then required an original spin on the routine during evaluations to impress the counselors and evaluators from many surrounding colleges in Ohio. Evaluators scrutinized participating squads on a daily basis. The Revere High School Varsity Cheerleading squads for the first time in their Cheer Ohio careers earned blue ribbons every day of cheer camp, a ribbon surpassed by the gold ribbons given out only on the first and last days of camp. Senior Varsity captains Alison Baumgardner and Kaitlyn Daubenmire led the charge.

Staats shared ways that the squads added originality to their performances, as well as additional accolades that Revere earned at Cheer Ohio from their creative performances.

“[Squads] are told to be creative with whatever material [they] are taught. [they] take that material and make it [their] own, use [their] own formations, perhaps add tumbling, and then later on during the day, [they] are tested and evaluated, and the girls are awarded a ribbon for each evaluation… our Varsity squad won blue ribbons all week,” Staats said.

Senior Maggie Riley, a Varsity cheerleader since her freshman year, described the physical workouts and preparations that the team goes through.

“We have to stretch a lot and also a bunch of ab workouts. Some of the girls like to go to tumbling and that is a big workout. That could be hard on your arms and other muscles if you don’t have very good flexibilities, so stretching is more important than actual conditioning, except for the ab workouts,” Riley said.

Daubenmire elaborated on the immense support that the cheerleaders show for the football players.

“We are there every game supporting them. If anyone was to be talking badly about the football team, we would be the first to step up. We tell people to come to the games and get involved, and we also pass along information like student section themes,” Daubenmire said.

The football cheerleaders hosted an all-squad performance on the track during Revere’s Homecoming Football Game on October 10th and invited all recent Revere High School cheerleading alumni at the game to join the performance.