Sydney Davis by Alisha Wille

From Stadium to Stage Lights

Friday night lights would simply not be the same without the cheerleaders. While many people only see the cheers from the stands of the game, few recognize the early mornings and long evenings of hard work the cheerleaders put in not just during football season, but year round. 

For Fredericksburg High School junior Sydney Davis, all of those early mornings and long evenings put in are worth it to do what she loves – cheering. 

“I got into tumbling at a young age,” Davis said. “I was doing flips and things like that starting in second grade, so I knew that I wanted to do cheer when I was older.”

Davis started cheering in middle school pep squad in the sixth grade and is now a varsity cheerleader for the high school. For Davis, there were many differences between cheer in middle school and cheer in high school.

“In high school cheer, we’re up super early at six, and we’re practicing after school,” Davis said. “The crowd is especially different– everyone in high school is a little bit more involved.”

Davis is at the high school by 6:45 a.m. for practice Monday through Friday and has practice from 6:00 to 8:00 on Monday and Wednesday evenings. After football season, however, morning cheer practices start earlier, and evening practices go for longer. 

“It gets even more chaotic because after football season, we have competition,” Davis said. “It’s a lot more stress and anxiety of trying to get everything done in the little amount of time we have.”

Although competition for cheer is usually in mid-January, the team’s first practice for competition was on September 5, when they got their choreography. At competition, the teams are judged based on three things.

“You do a band dance, a cheer, and a fight song, but it differs,” Davis said. ”We have a competition that’s prelims where it’s just those three, but when you get into finals, or top twenty, you add in a situational cheer, either offense or defense.”

Although Davis finds herself to be nervous at competition, she described the overall experience as really fun.

“At competition you’re so excited and really nervous,” Davis said. “Once you get it over with, it’s so much fun to just be out there getting everybody so excited.”

Four years ago, cheer placed 80th at state. Two years ago, they placed 22nd. Last year, cheer placed eighth.

“This year getting eighth out of 80 teams was insane,” Davis said. “I’m looking forward to being underneath the Friday night lights, then flipping the switch to the stage lights at Fort Worth for another amazing season.”