by Nico Guzman | staff writer

Now that there are no more football games, the Johnson cheerleaders are starting to prepare for competition season that is coming up in a couple of weeks.

“During football season, we focus more on small cheers about football, but towards the end of the season, we are more competitive with tumbling and intense stunts,” junior cheerleader Macie Mackey-Berry said.

There are many major competitions coming up for the varsity squad and junior varsity squad.

“We have our UIL for game day and our Nationals for game day and all squads,” senior Gracelyn Doctor said.

There are two different teams that compete, so all cheerleaders must try out at the end of August.

“We try out at the end of each year including 8th grade to be on the team in general and another tryout in August to be on the competition team, but not everyone makes the competition team,” Mackey-Berry said.

Both competitions teams have been practicing as much as they can in the class period and almost everyday after school.

“We’re practicing five days a week, 45 minutes in class and about three hours after school, we continue to keep running our entire routine over and over, we break it down into sections and try to make each section the best we can,” senior co-captain Addison Lewis said.

The competition squads hope to do as well as they did last year, if not then even better than they did.

“We hope to place first again in UIL state, place first at UCA State and at least top 5 at nationals this year,” Mackey -Berry said.