This will be the first time since 2006 that the Noble High School cheer squad will compete for the competitive cheer state championship. Cheer sponsor Kristal Standridge said the team is ready to prove themselves Saturday



NORMAN — Oklahoma high school cheerleading won’t be on the sidelines this weekend as squads head to the Oklahoma State Championship Cheer Competition.

High school cheer squads from across Oklahoma are coming to the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman to show judges what they can do in two-minute routines. Each team has already competed in a regional competition to get a high enough score to qualify for state.

“It’s totally a team effort. It takes everyone doing their part and getting it right to make it to state,” Norman High School cheer coach Deana Edgar said. “We have two minutes for our one-time chance to make it. There are no redoes, no second chances. You take the mat and, two minutes later, it’s done. Months of work go into that two minutes.”

This is the first year Norman High has qualified for state in three years.

The Norman High team started working on their routines in June and then buckled down with longer, harder practices in August.

“We put up so much work during the summer,” Edgar said. “We have four days during the week because we have a zero hour, but we have outside tumbling coaches and stunting coaches that come in on Mondays and Thursdays. Because we were so much more focused, we were able to continue to two times a week.

All these practices were on top of sideline cheering during football games, setting up halftime routines and helping plan school assemblies.

Norman High senior Emily Spears said a lot of people think all the cheer squad does is stand on the sideline and chant.

“They don’t actually come to our practices and see how hard we actually work,” Spears said. “Football gets a couple of games to make it to state, while we get that one chance, that two-minute period, to make it to state.”

Spears has been cheering since she was little. She loves getting close to her teammates and keeping their energy up while striving to improve.

Brandy Corcoran said that strive for excellence defines cheerleaders, just like other athletes. Corcoran is one of the state cheer judges with the Oklahoma Secondary School Activity Association. She’s been a judge for four years and before that, she worked as a college cheerleading coach.

In high school, Corcoran also played basketball and ran track, but cheerleading is what got her a college scholarship.

“You’re never going to plateau in cheer. You can also do better, and when you’re a competitive athlete, that’s perfect,” Corcoran said. “It’s come a long way from traditional sideline to competitive cheer and now with stunts; that is so exciting.”

Stunts is a new competition within cheerleading focused on the fundamentals of cheer with a head-to-head competition between two squads.

In stunts, two teams take mats next to each other in a four-quarter competition. The first quarter is for stunts. The second quarter is jumps, followed by tumbling. In the fourth quarter, each team does stunts, jumps and tumbling with a pyramid, as well.

“You start off with a coin toss and the winner of the coin toss gets to call the stunt. If you win, you, of course, call what you are best at and you hope the other team isn’t as good as you,” Edgar said. “You’re given six routines for each of those quarters that you have to learn. So the girls have 24 different routines to learn. That is all girls; boys are not allowed in stunt.”

Right after competitive cheer ends, teams will begin preparing for stunts.

“In Oklahoma, it’s kind of a year-round sport because they have to start so early to get their basics done in order to have routines done before classes start, so they can focus on being ambassadors for their school and doing sideline cheer,” Corcoran said.

For now, all attention is on this weekend.

For Noble High School’s cheer squad, the state competition Saturday isn’t just about trying to take home a trophy.

“We want to go out and prove to everybody in the cheer community that we deserve to be there,” Noble High Cheer sponsor Kristal Standridge said. “Noble deserves to be part of the competitive cheer community.”

This will be Noble High’s first time to make state for 11 years.

When Standridge became the cheer sponsor two years ago, she knew nothing about competitive cheer.

“I think a lot of people think what the cheerleaders do is just what they see on the sidelines on Friday night, but there is so much more to it than that,” Standridge said. “I’m an ex-athlete. I played soccer and basketball, and nothing is more grueling than cheerleading.”

She said her cheerleaders are up at the crack of dawn to get to practice at 6:30 before school starts.

When she became the sponsor, Standridge said the Noble community had been pushing for years to have a more competitive high school cheer squad, especially Adam Hughes, middle school cheer coach, and numerous cheer little league organizations and choreographers like Becca Slaughter, who choreographed Noble High’s routine.

“[The Noble Cheer squad] was talented enough the whole time, it was just making them realize it,” Standridge said. “I can’t take any credit for that. There are people in the community who have wanted this for a very long time. I think they’re excited that we have finally started to make that shift.”

Edgar said they had to take a stunt out of the routine because one girl broke her hand over the weekend. Standridge said her team also has dealt with some injuries like a broken hand and a twisted ankle.

Stunts are difficult, but Standridge said other things, like tumbling at the same time as another person, are also difficult to master.

“I think people forget these boys and girls are athletes. They come into the gym just as often, if not more, than other sports,” Edgar said. “They light weight, they have private practice with their tumbling, they run. People think we just put on the bows and the lipstick and look pretty, but that’s not it at all. It’s a very dangerous sport.”

Both Noble High School and Norman High will compete in the Large Co-Ed Division. Each team gets additional points for audience participation, so supporters are encouraged to attend.