After her first year coaching the cheerleading program at McCallum, head coach Sydney Shriever decided to make a major change to the program: to enter the UIL state cheerleading competition. The idea of competing had been proposed in the late months of the 2024 school year and was met with a positive response from the team, according to junior Julia Ross.
“I think it’s going to be a good experience for us, and we can really decide if we want to continue competition from then on out, or not,” Ross said. “I think it could be cool if we do decide to do this every year. We could become a competitive team. I also do think it’s going to bring us a lot closer, with the road trip and just this new experience.”
In late fall, when cheer would normally strengthen endurance and learn stunts, they will now be spending the time perfecting the routine for competition in late January.
“In the normal offseason we would be going to the weight room, running more, doing all of the strength and endurance training things,” Shriever said. “Instead of that, every day at practice we are just running the routine over and over again to clean it up, work out all the kinks, timing, and placement.”
McCallum has never competed in the UIL spirit contest, which held its first meet in the 2015-2016 school year.
“It’s new for me, cheer in general,” she said. “And McCallum cheer has never gone to a UIL contest before, at least in recent history, so it’s new to everyone here too, which is really exciting.”
For junior co-captain Lilia Williams, competition life is nothing new, due to her years of competitive cheerleading experience. Based on that prior experience, she is hopeful about the team’s chances to win the first round of competitions.
“I have brought knowledge of just cheer and a lot of the stunting skills that I learned from competition cheer, so I’m definitely able to help a lot with that,” Williams said.“I think that having the experience of doing it before and being a leader on the team will definitely be helpful.”
Shreiver believes that competing as a team will make the cheer squad more efficient and more connected especially in the spring semester after football season ends.
“It’s been really fun to see everyone working hard for this specific goal,” said Shriever. “It’s a different kind of pressure than practicing a routine for a pep rally or football game. It feels different than that because we’re getting graded on it this time.”
Their routine for the upcoming competition is comprised of a situational cheer, a band dance, and a fight song. The routine has been cleaned and perfected since the first few weeks of September. On the day of the competition, the team will have five minutes to finish the routine.
“So the dance that we’re doing is to a band recording of “Y’all ready for this?” Shriever said. “For the cheer part, they’ll call offense or defense, and then they have to respond based on that, then they have another cheer after that, which is similar to what they do at football games.”
The shift in focus from practice to competition has been both exciting and nerve-wracking for the team. For Shreiver and Williams, the stakes feel higher this time, as they’re not just preparing a performance for an event—they’re working toward something that will be judged critically.
Although she is an experienced cheerleader, this is Williams’s first year in a leadership position. Since she was elected to the position of co-captain, along with other junior co-captain Larkin Long last April, Williams has learned how to lead the team through football season, which Long said required a great deal of planning and commitment.
“Football season was obviously focused a lot about football and all of the things that go into just a football game, which is a lot,” she said. “We have a lot of various things that we have to get done that I don’t necessarily think the crowd sees. It was a lot of focusing on memorizing the cheers and just short, quick routines that we would perform .”
With the end of the football season, Williams is now learning what it takes to be a captain while competing.
“Competition season is so much more time and effort put into just one, longer routine, but it’s a lot more effort to make sure it’s perfect because you have judges looking at every single aspect of the performance, unlike when you’re just performing for a crowd at a football game.”
As the team looks ahead, Shreiver remains optimistic about the team’s goals for the competition.
“I think regardless of how we do, we want to start going (to competition) after this year,” she said. “Our goal is to make it to finals. I think that would be a really big accomplishment if we could do that on our first run. But, after we get a feel for it, I think it’ll be fun to keep working towards that every year.”
