When they’re not busy bringing the school spirit to countless sports games, cheer has been diligently practicing to perfect their routine for their first competition of the year, the Oct. 9 Invitational at Long Reach High School in Howard County.

With competitions just around the corner, cheer commits to a rigorous practice schedule to maintain their regional title and perform their best at each upcoming competition.

This will be the first and only competition before counties on Oct. 26, providing the team with the chance to compete against other schools before then.

“Each high school year, you can host your own competition if you would like,” head coach Vanessa Barnes said. “Long Reach High School hosts one every year, though we don’t go to them every year. This is our first time going to [the] Long Reach High School [Invitational].”

With the competition consisting of many talented teams, there’s a lot of pressure to perform well at their first Invitational.

“There have always been a lot of schools from all over Maryland competing in our division,” senior Fiorella Urioste said. “Since we’re in D-1 there are a lot of schools with really high levels [of skills] that we’ve never competed against before because they are in different counties. Churchill and Sherwood would be our biggest competitors.”

Participating in invitationals is excellent practice for later events, such as the rapidly approaching counties.

“In the past, we’ve done pretty well,” Barnes said. “What it does for us [is] it helps us to get ready for counties because they can get their feet wet and get all the nerves out. We get a score so we can see how we did and what we can improve on. After that, we have a few more practices before counties.”

The practice schedule has been intense and Barnes is dedicated to ensuring the team is ready for the upcoming Invitational.

“To prepare, [during] each practice I’ve taught them something new to go into the routine,” Barnes said. “At the beginning of practice, we normally do tumbling to warm up. They’ll warm up and practice each stunt that’s in the routine, and then after that we will go through and do fallouts. We haven’t done our first fallout yet, just the tumbling and stunting. We do the routine over and over again so that they can start to prepare themselves, and once I see that they’re ready, then we do a full go.”

The pressure is felt during the practices, especially with a regional title on the line. Luckily, each member of the team is dedicated to improving their skills and working together as a team.

“I think there’s a lot of people who are pushing really hard to get new skills all the time, just everything progressing a lot,” junior Evgeniya Ivragimova said. “I think that the team is really friendly and we support each other well together as one.”

During practice, safety always comes first. During the strain of practice, it is important for each team member to do their part in ensuring everyone’s safety.

“Cheerleading is very, very hard. It’s one of the most dangerous sports,” Barnes said. “A lot of people don’t know that because it’s overlooked, but it is very difficult. Any minute, one can be dropped from all the way up in the air. That’s probably one of the things I would think people need to know about cheerleading.”

Students looking to support the team at Invitationals and counties can find information about purchasing tickets on cheer’s Instagram page @wjcheer.