A few months back, when senior nights took over football pre-game, there was a noticeable lack of seniors on the cheer team. With a lack of seniors came a lack of senior captainship and leadership, leaving four juniors, Ava Best, Isabelle Olcott, Kevin Moutry, and Rylee Jones, to share captainship. 

Olcott spoke on how this season has been different from previous years and how the team’s struggles will lead to being more successful in the future.  

“[Sharing captainship] is definitely a learning thing. You definitely have to learn skillship as a junior to take on a senior role. When you’re a senior on the cheer team, you already have a role in place, but when you’re going from sophomore to junior and having to take that captain role, you feel like you have to learn everything faster,” Olcott said. 

Olcott explained that being forced to step into the captainship role as a junior came with more than one issue, but the main problem that needed to be worked out was communication.

“There were difficult parts because four of us had to take that role. [We] had to learn how to communicate between the four and learn with [our] coaches who work with what, but it’s a lot easier because you don’t have as many roles on you at once,” Olcott explained.

Although there were bumps in the road, Olcott feels that this season’s struggles will lead to success in the future. 

 “[The season] has been a little bit [different] because we lost eight seniors last year and then we had none stepping into that [senior] role… [The lack of seniors has affected the freshmen] a little bit because they don’t have that person who’s been there for four years to help lead them through [freshman year]. I also think that us juniors have helped a little bit by being like, We’re all still learning; it’s a connection between us,” Olcott explained. “I think that this will help in a good way because juniors will go out and finally be seniors and have the same role, so we know what to do and it’ll be better.” 

As basketball and competition season approaches for the team, they hope to keep learning and growing to become more successful in the future, using this year as a learning experience.