You decided to go to the highly anticipated Homecoming game. Once you arrive you see your team come out of the tunnel, and you can’t help but shouting with the cheerleaders “Royals!Royals!Royals!” Thrill is the only way to describe what the cheerleaders can get out of the crowd.

“I really don’t have any special rituals except for zoning in, doing our handshake with my stunt group, and just focusing, said junior and Team Officer, Sofia Plasencia.

ILS cheerleaders are known their excellence. Sophomore Nadia Pages, main-base (stunting position that holds the right foot)for the green team, started on the team last year, and for her first homecoming game she had this to say about the pressure she felt:

Even though it seems like everything went well at the game, they had some mistakes like any other great cheer team. Some of the cheerleaders have been to nationals or states multiple times.

“We mess up a lot, but it’s what we do when the real pressure is on us that matters. I have won states twice and nationals once, and luckily we have always pulled through in the end. This season we are really practicing a lot to make sure we don’t make any mistakes, and we are improving on our faults,” explained Plasencia

As easy and as fun as it looks from the stands, they have to be extremely focused on the stunts they pull off. There is a lot more that goes into cheer than smiling and shouting.

“The stunting part… it’s about very precise technique that goes into it, and one wrong move and someone could fall,” Pages added.

All athletes know this feeling of people not understanding how hard their sport is to execute. When they go out there and show how hard they’ve been working, they feel immense pride in themselves.

“Just performing this new routine is nerve racking and stressful, but it feels so good to hit everything super good,”“ said Plasencia.

If you watched them at home cheering the football team to victory November 5th, you know exactly what it is all about.