High School Highlights: Greenup County Cheerleaders
When I sat down to speak with the head coach of the Greenup County High School (GCHS) Cheerleading Team, Candy Berry, I was greeted by a kind and dedicated woman who has worked with the program for over forty-three years.
Since Mrs. Berry has started coaching at GCHS, the squad has won sixteen national competition titles. This means that out of the forty national titles that have been given out, forty percent have gone to the GCHS team.
Mrs. Berry has been involved in cheerleading since she was eight years old, originally performing at Russell schools. She claims that she will most likely be working with this group for the rest of her life, much to her husband’s dismay.
During this interview, I was able to get an in-depth look into the practice and competition schedule that the team undertakes. Mrs. Berry jokingly stated that during the main competition season, the only day that the team has off are Sundays.
In addition to the competitions, which Mrs. Berry says are full of both tension and excitement, she also places a great deal of importance on supporting the other teams at the school. Referring to this, Candy says, “If you can’t entertain your own home team… how do you expect to entertain a crowd?” Mrs. Berry is also very dedicated to returning the support that the Greenup County community gives her team. She says that if her group is asked to do a community event, they will say yes, in order to help the community that helps her team so much.
During the most recent season, the squad placed in the top eight teams in the national competition. Mrs. Berry made it clear that she was proud of her team and their accomplishments but still wanted to push her team to do even better in the upcoming season.
In addition to interviewing Candy, I was given the opportunity to interview two students that are members of the GCHS cheer squad. Miracle Sammons is a freshman who originally started cheerleading in eighth grade. Casey Holmes is a sophomore wrapping up her first year as a cheerleader after moving to GCHS during her freshman year.
Casey and Miracle were a little shy at the start of the interview but were still very expressive when it came to telling me how much they loved both cheerleading and their squad. They even stated that most of their friends had been made through cheerleading, and they have even become best friends because of their work together in the squad.
When asked what her favorite thing about cheerleading was, Mrs. Berry said that it was getting to see the excited new faces of girls as they moved into high school, especially when they got to try on their uniforms for the first time, which for many of her students is a childhood dream, and her least favorite thing was dealing with the high school drama.
Every member of the squad that I talked to seemed very hopeful about their prospects going into the next year, and with their excellent track record, I find it difficult to doubt them.
Greenup County Cheerleaders have a long legacy of National Acclaim. Check out this video from 1983.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKhhUOiSnVU[/embedyt]
High School Highlights: Greenup County Cheerleaders
