For students who want to bask under the Friday night lights, cheering on Wildkats, pumping up the crowd with chants and T-shirts – the time to prepare is now.

With the end of the school year approaching, sports and other extracurricular activities are already looking into the next school year. One of these is cheer. 

There will be a mandatory parent and candidate meeting which requires them to attend one of the two meetings. The first one Thursday, February 16 and the second on Tuesday, February 21. Both meetings will be held at 6:00 p.m. in the WHS LGI room. The clinic will be March 6-8 from 3:30-5:30 p.m. Final tryouts are held March 9 at 2:30 p.m.

As they prepare for next football season, the seniors are running tryouts in hopes to build an amazing team for the next year. With the nerves building from the cheer tryout date drawing near, the senior cheerleaders share what to expect during practice.

“The 2023-2024 cheer tryouts are going to be a lot of fun,” senior Katie Leggett said. “Every year the tryouts are mostly the same thing. This year is a little bit different because the Saturday before the tryout clinic starts, we will actually be sending out a video of the tryout materials to the girls. The clinic is three days long, and we teach the girls the try out material. On Wednesday we do a mock try to get them ready for tryouts on Thursday.”

Leggett walks through the process of how tryouts will go, helping the candidates to know what to expect.

“Thursday tryouts will require the girls to wear a white shirt and black shorts with a white or black bow,” Leggett said. “They will have a number picked at random and that will be the order they try out in. They will walk in individually and they will tumble, either running or standing tumbling. They will do two jumps of their choice. After that they do a cheer that they learned during the clinic. Then they go into the hallway and wait for the other girls to finish. A group of 4-5 will come back into the gym and do a chant and dance for the judges.”

Even though cheer tryouts might be stressful, Leggett hopes to encourage the cheerleaders and will miss being a part of the team.

“The hardest part about it is learning all the material the week of and then having to do it in front of the judges,” Leggett said. “I think the most important thing is being spirited no matter what and being confident, whether you actually are or not. Being a senior this year is really exciting because I’ve been looking forward to being in charge of tryouts since freshman year.”

Other senior cheerleaders share their excitement of being in charge of tryouts that they have been looking forward to since freshman year. 

“Cheer tryouts are the most nerve-wracking week,” senior Chelsie Forrester said. “The seniors run the tryouts, we make the cheer chant and dance that the girls will perform in front of the judges at the end of the week. Knowing that this was my last year was bittersweet, but it makes everything that much more special and I wouldn’t trade any of the memories I made for anything.”