growing with cheer team

By Emily Zhao

The St. George’s cheer team is no longer just on the sidelines. Just four years ago, the program was dying, but now with both a competitive and non-competitive team, it is more alive than ever. When senior Elizabeth Kilmurray joined the cheer team in 2018, the program was losing most of its traction.

“People weren’t interested in it, and it used to spark a lot of interest,” she said. “We used to have tryouts, and then it just became a sign-up.”

In 2019, the team was down to a meager 10 people. The following two years hardly saw an improvement, with 11 cheerleaders in 2020 and 12 in 2021.

Now St. George’s has added a competitive team to the cheer program. With the opportunity to compete against other cheer teams across the nation, interest in the program was renewed, and the cheer team grew from 12 to 28 people – double the size that it was last year.

Sideline — or non-competitive — practices consist of the cheerleaders learning a multitude of cheers and stunts for Friday