Cheer, a year-long sport that involves cheering for many of Lakeland High School’s sport teams, will begin its competition season.

They start practice in August but they don’t start competitions until winter time. 

Cheer competitions have four categories that the team competes in. These being show, pom, sideline and stunt, show being the most important one to win. 

Last season the team was heading to state, yet was cancelled due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in March. 

For this season, they have a lot of returning players and they have the potential to repeat the same success they had last year.  A team where their biggest advantage is their athleticism and strength. 

With this team being so talented,  the issue that many players have is that they become too critical of themselves. Coach Peck explains in an email  “We can always find things that need improvement but often times we forget that success almost never happens without some failure along the way.”

Head coach, Cynthia Peck, has been coaching the team for four years, and in total has coached cheer for 8 years. 

When talking about the upcoming cheer season, Coach Peck explained her outlook on the season. “I am super excited to compete with this team that has grown to be even better than they were last year”.

Lexi Furrey, a junior flyer, and Emma Zelene, a junior base on the varsity cheerleading team, are expected to be big contributors.  Both have been on cheer since freshman year of high school. 

Furey described the team and how the players are very supportive with each other. That when someone makes a mistake or gets down, they help to bring them back up. 

The Lakeland cheer team’s first competition is January 23 with three more competitions after.