EAHS cheer squad recruits football players
By Cathy Kozlowicz
Correspondent
When members of the Elkhorn Area High School cheer team recruited some football players, senior defensive end Clayton Fuller was a little bit intrigued.
He said he thought tumbling would be cool to try but honestly, he and the other four football player recruits did not know what to expect.
“I did not know that cheer was actually a sport,” he said.
He quickly found out that it is a lot harder than it looks and, he said, was just as competitive and challenging as football, but different.
After practicing five to six days a week of being a base for the team, sending what are called flyers up in the air and doing basket tosses, Fuller helped Elkhorn Cheer win state in the non stunt competition and earn runner-up small co-ed and all-girl stunt squad this season.
“After a week, I just feel in love with the sport,” Fuller said. “The first practice was kind of odd. We were trying to figure things out. The girls knew what to do, and we just stood there watching them.”
With football, he said, it is a lot about physical strength and going against another person. In cheer, he said, it is about using your body, your bone structure and flexibility.
“It (cheer) is a big team sport. It is all about getting your job done. It is more than how strong you are. You have to know how to do it, and it is relationship-based. It takes a lot of trust,” he explained.
Fuller also said in cheer, there is only one chance to get it right.
“It is hard to catch others. In my first routine, I was so nervous, I thought I would freeze up,” he said, adding that it takes a lot of mental energy in addition to physical.
“It’s a sport where you have to make it look effortless when it’s not. It’s about making the crowd and people watch us. You don’t want the judges to see how hard it is,” Fuller said.
By the end of the season, Fuller said he was doing the most difficult stunts, including the hardest to learn, which was the cupie – holding two feet in one hand, and the rewind pyramid.
“People have to do the right thing at the right time,” Fuller said of the rewind pyramid, and he said he worked hard to provide a great base for people to land.
“All your teammates have to have your trust in you,” he said.
Nine-year cheer coach Kerry (Yanke) Greenwald said the rewind and the cupie are both tough routines to learn.
And she agreed that trust is huge, she said.
“The rewind is difficult because the flyer needs to be consistent in foot placement, open at the right time and sides need to pull up to make the center look effortless,” Greenwald said.
“The flyer needs to squeeze incredibly hard and keep her body in alignment. The base needs to use his body to hold the flyers weight and stay under her,” she added.
Flyer and all state-cheer squad member AnnaBelle Cocroft said the trick for her is to make her body compact when she is in the air.
And she needs to be smiling the whole time, of course.
“You need to do your job right, and everyone needs to do their job,” she said.
The Elkhorn Cheer team began competing in the 2011-2012 season and has won many state championships: in 2018, super small and non-stunt competitions; in 2017, non-stunt and all girl stunt quad categories; in 2016, super small and all girl stunt quad competitions; in 2013, non-stunt category.
Connections the same
Greenwald, a 1994 EAHS graduate, said the relationship building, bonding between teammates and the love shown toward each other is still the same, but cheerleading in general has changed drastically.
Doing stunts with precision, accuracy and teamwork makes it a sport, while in Greenwald’s day, it was more of sideline cheering for the basketball, football and wrestling teams.
Sideline cheering is not done as much these days because of space issues – the cheerleaders can’t go directly in front of the fans so stand along the baselines.
“You don’t have the same connection with the audience,” Greenwald said.
The cheer squad now has its own facility to practice in and competes in eight to nine competitions a season.
The team does one fundraiser a season – a kid’s clinic in the fall – and volunteer, help with the booster club or step up when the school needs help.
While they still do sideline cheering and performed at the Kohl Center in Madison when the boys basketball team went to state, they do not attend every game.
Greenwald said she remembers there being a lot of competition to make the team when she did it in high school. Now, no one is cut.
“Everyone has a talent; you just have to find it. We take any skill level,” she said.
At the beginning of the season, some have never tired the sport and by the end, they’re able to do stunts.
Greenwald said cheering can be underrated, and others may not always understand it.
“But once they see it, they are like ‘Wow! I did not know they were so athletic,” she said.
