Friday nights spent chanting on the sidelines, student section going wild, the slightest breeze running through her hair, encouraging the football team to win their game. This is the experience of Makayla Gavin, a senior, who has been a cheerleader for three years.
Gavin credits her fellow classmate and another member on the squad, Emily Patten, for persuading her to do cheer in the beginning. “She sat me in the cafeteria and convinced me to sign up,” so that day Gavin decided to begin her cheerleading journey.
At the beginning of Gavin’s junior year, she wanted change. She tried out Lisbon cheer, but halfway through the season, she chose to come back to Mount Vernon. “Comparing the two teams, Gavin said that she definitely prefers the Mount Vernon program because there is. “a lot more order in the team.”
Gavin explains that the cheer squad is its own type of supportive family, “Coach Lynner and Coach Abby are really supportive and easy going, which makes it a lot easier for newer people on the team to become more comfortable.” As cheer can be very competitive and very hard, Gavin portrays that there’s, “definitely a lot of stress about it but everyone works together and works it out!”
Being a part of the cheer squad needs a lot of commitment. Coach Lynner said that learning the dances and stunts takes a lot of perseverance, patience, and truly shows the girls true characters. The dances and stunts are very hard to get down and master; so being able to do them and try again when you mess up, takes a lot of practice.
Gavin conveyed the persistence you have when learning stunts: “It’s very entertaining watching coach Abby and Emily barrel roll over each other when Emily falls from a stunt and Abby tries to catch her.”
This is Gavin’s last year of cheerleading and her advice to oncoming cheerleaders is, “Don’t stress about it because everyone struggles at first. But once you stick with it, it’ll come to you naturally.”
