By Daisy Ruiz, Sports editor
Indian Trail’s cheer team had many accomplishments this year like the junior varsity team placing second in their first two competitions. Now that this season is over, the team is looking forward to finding new members and bidding farewell to its seniors. Not only was this a great season for the cheer team, but their new head coach had a few accomplishments himself.
This was Lucas Ade’s rookie season with the Hawks cheer team. It was also his first time he coached high school varsity level. He previously coached Mahone Middle School’s cheer team for more than seven years before debuting with the team this season.
“Coming into the high school world was a bit of a culture shock for me. High schoolers and middle schoolers are much different in regards to their abilities but also, their intellectual and social capacities,” Ade said.
So what were some accomplishments that the team reached?
“All year we chased getting 75 percent on our score sheets during competition. We finally achieved this at regionals, qualifying us for state and hitting the 100-point mark for the first time this season during our state performance!” he said.
“We also had a lot of individual achievements that we reached this year which was good,” said Cheyanne Misko, a general studies senior and co-captain of the team.
While the team had achievements this year, not everything went spectacular. The team lost two of their varsity members after injuries that resulted in the two of them having to get surgery. Two junior varsity members were called up take their places after the loss.
They also had a lot of adjustments this season.
“Being that this was my rookie season, I needed to be more of an observer. I took a lot of direction from the girls, the parents, and Atkins, our amazing activities director. Not to mention an enormous amount of assistance and direction from our incredible University coach Holly Richards,” Ade said.
“We also had a big attitude change. Due to the fact that we missed state for the first time in Hawk’s cheer history last year, this year was really focused on group and team effort,” Misko said.
But the team is also going to be changed academically next season as well.
“Right off the bat, I have found that the grading behavior system I have in place for tryouts favors the incoming freshman. This is an adjustment that needs to be made to allow those students that are taking Honors and AP courses to gain more points than the regular course middle school grades,” he said.
During next year’s tryouts, Ade promises this will be adjusted.
“I’m going to provide a multiplier for AP courses and a different multiplier for honors courses at two and then standard classes will be as they were last year. Then there are of course changes to procedure that just will make things easier and more consistent,” Ade said.