Alicia Salerno

Cheerleader recounts ECIC championship win

As the season comes to an end I cannot be any more proud of how far my team has come. We started this season out with receiving a third place trophy at one of our first local competitions. The scores for our division were close, and we missed first place by only a few points.

Then came ECICs. We had taken on the roll of hosting it at our school this year and it was something that we were all pretty psyched for. It entitled a lot of planning on the coaches and parents’ part, and a lot of preparation for all of us, especially the cheerleaders.

For us girls, we had more important things on our minds than making a poster for every squad competing or setting up the practice mats for competition day. We were focused on winning. Both squads, varsity and junior varsity, felt the need to prove ourselves to our family members, coaches, peers, and school that we really could win this.

We set up for the competition for the majority of the day Saturday and early in the morning on Sunday. By time it was our turn for warm-ups Sunday, we were exhausted. We all came together and refocused ourselves on the one thing that we had practiced so long, and so hard for; that first place trophy. We received a much-needed pep talk from our coach and kept our thoughts on what we needed to do to perform an amazing routine that would blow everyone away.

With our five minutes of warm-up time over, we all walked down to the gym, hearts racing and palms sweating. It’s a feeling that’s indescribable. Our names were called and we walked out onto the mat and performed — if I can say so myself — one heck of a routine. JV went on immediately after us and gave the best performance they had all season. All of us were so excited, but still so nervous.

After what seemed like an eternity, the awards ceremony finally began. We were all so excited when JV won first in its division, but now it was our turn. We competed against three other teams, and when our names weren’t called for 3rd or 2nd, we knew that we either didn’t place, or had actually accomplished this incredible goal.

There we all sat, our heads down, sitting in a circle holding each others’ hands. When we heard our name get called for first it was basically a scene out of a movie. The entire team exploded, jumping up and down, screaming and hugging each other. And boy did I love every second of it.
We’re still so proud of all that our squad has been able to accomplish. Tomorrow we head to Ocean City, Maryland for Nationals and we are beyond excited. This will be an experience of a lifetime and we hope we can bring home a trophy to be able to remember it that much better.

Alicia Salerno

Alicia Salerno is a senior at Orchard Park High School and member of the varsity cheerleading squad. She will blog throughout the year to provide an inside look at the team. This is her third installment.

The very first thing I’d like to talk about is how extremely proud all of the cheerleaders are of our boys for making it so far once again. It’s been such a privilege to be able to say that we are cheerleaders for the Orchard Park Varsity Football team. We could not be more thankful for the amazing season that we have been able to cheer for, and we want all the boys to know that we are so grateful to have been there for every game and to watch them never give up, even until the last seconds of their season. Thanks boys for the amazing season!

On another note, I’ve never appreciated more the sportsmanship that our coaches and sports department has taught us until this year, and especially this last game. We will always be proud to be an Orchard Park Quaker, whether we’ve won or lost.

Over the past few weeks, the squad has been trying to come up with a regular schedule to stick to so we can continue improving, and I believe we’ve finally done that. We’ve started focusing in on parts of our competition routine to master and practice and are pleased with what we’ve been able to accomplish so far. Our squad has previously had the ability to master a stunt the very first day we’ve tried it, so as you could imagine when we weren’t able to hit the new stunts we learned in the very first day, we got frustrated. But sometimes, getting frustrated is good because it only made us work harder in the end, and it feels that much better when we finally get the hang of it.

We’ve started practicing at Outlaws in Clarence once to twice a week to improve our gymnastics skills and also to work through our routine on a full floor. These past two weeks were our first weeks going, but I can already tell that this is going to benefit the squad tremendously.

The end to this season has been so bittersweet, but we are excited to get started cheering for this next season of basketball.

Go Quakers!!

Alicia Salerno

Alicia Salerno is a senior at Orchard Park High School and member of the varsity cheerleading squad. She will blog throughout the year to provide an inside look at the team. This is her second installment.

In the past few weeks, nothing drastic has changed with the squad. We did pick captains though! Big congrats to senior Kaely Kwitek and junior Karly Cerrone!

With every practice, we’re all really growing more as a squad. Last week we performed at the pep rally with our JV squad and it was a blast. We loved getting to show our peers how far we’ve come. We also loved getting to know our Junior Varsity members and seeing them grow as a squad as well. Both squads are improving with each practice.

One cool thing that we’re doing this year is we all have a member from JV that we’re paired up with, and throughout the season we have the opportunity to get to know them better and be a role model for them in not just Cheerleading, but in life as well! This will be so helpful in bringing the two squads together and making us one huge family.

This week is quite an important week for us. We’ve started to learn the choreography for our competition routine. It’s always a pretty stressful time, but in the end we always end up with an awesome routine that we can’t wait to show off at competition.

Our coaches just recently told us that we are going to be hosting the winter ECICs at Orchard Park this year! We are all extremely pumped for that since it’s one of our biggest competitions each year. This means we get to help set up for the competition and make posters with all of the other schools’ names on them! But this also means that we have a huge amount of pressure on us to win since we are the hosting team. The pressure just makes us work harder every practice and become as good as we can.

The squad this year has so much potential, and I really can’t wait to see where it takes us!

Alicia Salerno

Alicia Salerno is a senior at Orchard Park High School and member of the varsity cheerleading squad. She will blog throughout the year to provide an inside look at the team. This is her first installment.

The start to this Orchard Park varsity cheerleading season has been nothing but a success. It already feels like we’re months into it and we’ve only had one game.

This year we have a slightly smaller team than in past years. The squad is made up of 21 girls, with only 10 returning cheerleaders.  We have two brand new cheerleaders who haven’t held a pom-pom a day in their lives, and have both caught on in no time at all. We have additionally pulled up a freshman who has been an awesome contributor to the team as well. Even though we lost so many seniors last year, we have already accomplished a stunt that we haven’t been able to in the past, which has encouraged us to push ourselves in trying new things.

We cheered at the first football game last Saturday at Lockport and, of course, the boys won! We all had a lot of fun, but man was it hot. The first game of the season is always exciting, especially to the girls new to varsity. It’s our time to make good first impressions of the new varsity squad to our OP football and cheerleading fans as the boys make their first impressions to us. We love what we do and we love cheering on a winning team.

One thing that has always been and will always be obvious is that the ‘Var Squad’ is always more than just a team. We’re a family. (After spending approximately seven months together, how could we not be?) We are always encouraging each other, always supportive of one another, and we always stop to chat when we see another squad member out and about.  We are all already becoming so close and every year the friendships get stronger throughout the season. Two years ago, most of us cheered on JV together, and we all had a blast! Can’t wait to make this year even better!

Go Quakers!