As practice starts, “5-6-7-8!” can be heard throughout the competitive cheerleading gym. The cheerleaders start going through the choreography of the dance they have been practicing since the summertime. After they finish the run, they go through it again, making sure to work through any mistakes they might have made in the first run. They had been working on this routine for a few months now, and their first competition was on Halloween. Senior Narissa Goins talked about how she felt about having this opportunity to compete in Cheer Day. “Honestly, it’s not even relevant to cheer day, it’s more relevant to our actual school season. We do a lot of spiriting with cheer day, and I’m looking forward to that carrying over to our games and just making the overall mentality of the games different,” Goins said. Cheer Day is an opportunity cheerleaders at Columbus North have to do competitive cheerleading rather than only cheering at football and basketball games. “It’s kind of like competitive cheer competitions but for high school, so we will take a day and we’ll compete.” Goins said. Junior Leah Hartwell describes how practices for Cheer Day are different from practices for football and basketball games. “They’re different because in competition cheer we basically only do easy stunts, so we don’t really have to practice that,” Hartwell said. “We practice motions, dance, sharpness, being loud, and being energetic. On regular practices we practice harder stunts and stuff like that.” There are about 20 girls on the Cheer Day squad. Hartwell describes the process for which people are on the team. “All cheerers were given the opportunity to participate, but not everyone did. It was optional if you wanted to or not,” Hartwell said. “We only had space for 20 people, so I think a couple girls had to get cut as there were tryouts, but [also] not really [tryouts].” This is Senior Shayla Witchurch’s first year of competitive cheerleading, but she feels confident about how prepared the team is for their first competition. “I feel like we’re ready. We had a professional choreographer come to help us and we have practiced for a long time,” Witchurch said. “I could do it in my sleep, we’ve done it so many times, so I feel like we’re ready. If we mess up on anything, it’ll just be because we’re nervous because it’s our first competition.” Feeling this prepared helps with having previous experience in cheerleading and Witchurch has been cheering for nine years. She talks about what her favorite part of cheerleading is and how it carries over to her performance on game days and competition days. “I really like the team aspect of it. Everyone there is there to build up each other and support each other,” Witchurch said. “I also like just being in front of a crowd, and getting to cheer on your school as the crowd is cheering is a nice feeling because you feel part of the school and like you’re doing something important to help your team.”