OPINION

It is very disappointing how the Victor Valley College (VVC) cheerleading program was shuttered by school administrators and advisors.

 Cheerleading is a sport that a lot of high school students, both male and female, look forward to. They want to bring more school spirit and cheer on their sports teams.

Unfortunately, the program has been canceled, and students interested in participating were let down. The last time VVC had a cheer team was back in 2000. For reasons unknown there has been no cheer team since then. For the past couple of years there have been people that have tried to put a cheer team together, but unfortunately VVC administrators were not willing to help. 

Here’s a short history of the program. In June of 2019, a couple for girls got together and were able to successfully put a VVC cheer team together. From the start, school officials were not willing to help because they thought it wouldn’t be successful. But little did they know it was one of the best turn outs they have had. About 32 people showed up for tryouts. 

There were certainly bumps in the road. The head athletic director didn’t want a cheer team, so she told the participants we needed to become a “cheer club” first. We did so, completing all the necessary paperwork needed to do to become a cheer club. 

We got chartered, but unfortunately that delayed our progress, and we were running out of time because we needed to be prepared for the first football game of the season. The VVC administration and advisors for the cheer program didn’t let us practice or do anything on school grounds. But we all tried our best to find a way to come together and pull though. We got delayed, and for that reason many of the participants thought it wasn’t going to be unsuccessful. Along the way we lost a couple of students who were discouraged, but we gained new ones.

Once the 2019 football season started, we were all so pumped about being able to cheer for the VVC football team. But then a tragic incident occurred (an incident that I won’t discuss here because of the sensitivity of the topic), and we got kicked off the field. 

We all tried our best to earn our way back, but we got turned down with no support from our advisors. It was very unfortunate that we all had to say our goodbyes. We all had grown a strong connection with one another.

“I am very sad to see it go, because we did have some amazing times together,” said Alycia, one of the student participants in the program. “And for us to be kind of late starting the season, I believe we did really well to just being starting out. All of the girls contributed a lot, and I met some amazing girls throughout the way, and I’m honestly grateful for it.”

“We hated to watch it all go away, but memories were made,” said another participant named Eshon. “Although our season went by fairly quick, it is with honor that we got to bring back the legacy. Despite that most people didn’t consider us a team, we learned we were a family.”

I hated to watch us say goodbye to a dream we had all hoped for. Farewell VVC cheer. We hope to see you make a success in the future. Teamwork makes the dream work.