by Michelle Brooks | staff writer

Two weeks ago, the cheerleaders took four days off of school to go to Nationals in California. Although JV placed 13th out of the 36 teams that appeared on game day, the cheerleaders had to come back and make up all the work they missed.

“It’s kind of stressful having four days of work to make up with six different classes. But at the same time it’s nice that nationals [are] over and we don’t have practice anymore,” sophomore Eliza Harris said.

In an attempt to prepare for the amount of work that the students will inevitably have when they get back to school, cheer coach Shannon McKinley told the girls to tell their teachers about nationals in advance.

“We had a tryout meeting about a week before and I gave them [cheer students] all the details, that I actually told them even before that [nationals] to start telling their teachers that they were gonna be out so they could get as much work as possible done before we went,” McKinley said.

However, the cheerleaders did have rest time, which was also used to help finish any extra work.

“It’s always hard on them. I mean, when you miss that many days of school you have make up work for every single subject. So it’s always hard on them coming back and having that much make up work but I try to do things to their schedule to make it easier,” McKinley said. “So we [have] study hall in cheer class every day after we get back. So they have that time to work on their homework, and then we don’t practice at all once we get back so they don’t have any commitments before or after school.”

As well as cheer, other extracurricular activities, such as band, also have extra time to complete assignments from the days they missed school due to competitions and/or sporting events.

“On Wednesdays, we usually don’t have practice because that’s when colorguard practices out on the band pad. So during the band class period, it’s like I have mine 5th period and it goes like 20 minutes into my 6th period lunch,” sophomore Makayla Bonhomme said. “He’ll [Lipman] have us do study hall but if he knows we’re failing a class or getting close to it, or if we go up to him and ask for a study hall, he’ll let us do it as long as he knows we’re doing our work.”

In addition to the extra time, the students also have the access to help each other out.

“So, we have a lot more time to work on it. And we also have a free period now, in cheer, to make up work with the other students and collaborate and help each other learn the material that we missed,” Harris said.

Although they can catch up on the work, the cheerleaders also need to catch up on the knowledge.

“I feel like I can catch up, but, I might need more than, you know, three or four days because we are missing tests and quizzes and all that as well. So, we have to; we should really know the material that we missed so that we will do well on those,” Harris said.

According to McKinley, all of the girls have different styles of how to catch up on work.

“I think it’s different for different girls. I mean, it’s probably just based off of each person’s course load is different. Each person’s study habits are different. They’re gonna have differences in how much work they worked ahead of time. I have some girls who were done with their make up work by the second day we were back. So it’s really different for every student.” McKinley said.

But, according to Eliza, the trip was worth missing all those test and quizzes.

“I think that it was necessary for us to miss the four days because, you know, nationals is the biggest competition of the year and we have a lot of different times that we perform and it’s a lot of stress on us. And, we also need a couple days there to practice and we also need a travel day to go there and back,” Harris said.