COACH LISA’S FIRST COMPETITION SEASON

Cupertino High School’s competitive cheerleaders rediscovered their love for the sport under their new head coach, Lisa Vinciale.

Vinciale has coached and performed for cheer teams for 25 years. She cheered competitively from the age of three until the age of 20 before instructing at Eaton Elementary School’s child development center.

Kami Tomberlain, CHS’ principal, offered Vinciale the head coaching position for the cheer program in 2011. Vinciale had declined the opportunity.

“I couldn’t be fully committed. I didn’t want to take [the cheer team] if I couldn’t be there for them all the time,” Vinciale said.

When Tomberlain offered the job to Vinciale in 2022, she accepted the position. “With COVID happening, I didn’t end up going back to teaching,” Vinciale said, “So I decided to come on in.”

The previous cheer coach enforced rules during practice that negatively affected many cheerleaders’ morale.

“[The cheerleaders] are scared to express themselves to me because they weren’t allowed to before.

I’m very big on like, ‘talk to me, tell me what’s going on,’” Vinciale said. “That [caused] setbacks in routines because they didn’t believe in themselves, or they didn’t feel like they could make a mistake.”

Vinciale eased herself into the program, slowly modifying the cheer line and then, all of a sudden, I had to split my focus and time to make room for the competition team. Once I was able to figure out scheduling and stuff like that, it’s [been] a breeze,” Vinciale said. team’s practices and adapting to their preferred training methods.

The competitive cheer team attended several meets this season and obtained mixed results. Their highest placement was second place at the USA Spirit virtual regional competition on Dec. 17, and their lowest was eighth place at the Central Coast Section Championship hosted by Independence High School on Jan. 14.

“I didn’t want to just come in and not give them a say. This should be fun for them. It shouldn’t be where they just come here and don’t get to express how they feel,” Vinciale said. “I didn’t want to change too much.”

Initially, Vinciale only led practices for the sideline cheer team. When the winter athletic season began, she also began coaching the competitive team.

“I was giving everything to side-

“I’m glad we’re not a team that’s coming in as just good, good and good. I’m also glad we’re not a team coming in and always taking a loss,” Vinciale said. “I think that we’re at a good spot where we’re in the middle right now. There’s a lot of room to grow.”

Despite the team’s share of defeats and victories, competitive cheer experienced the most successful season of CHS’ winter athletic teams this year. Competitive cheer will attend the USA Spirit Nationals in Anaheim, CA, in late February 2023. Vinciale has begun leading practices for the competition and is excited to continue guiding the cheerleaders