At the end of first semester last school year, the cheer sponsor for Hastings High School resigned. This posed a great difficulty for the staff, as it would be hard to find a new coach in the middle of the school year. Thankfully, the team’s assistant coach Ashley Caudill was able to help out for the remainder of the school year. However, Caudill was not able to coach this year because she moved to Lincoln at the end of college.
Caudill’s departure created the need for a new cheer coach for the 2021-2022 school year. Little did anyone know that it would be two people who already coach at Hastings High. Meagan Stoner and Allie Remmers have coached the dance team for a number of years. Megan has been coaching dance for seven years, while Allie has been coaching for three and a half years. They decided that it would be a fun challenge to coach the cheer team as well.
“I like to tackle new things,” Stoner said.
Along with getting to know the cheer team, they have also had to learn many new things the cheerleaders do. One of the biggest differences from cheer and dance is stunting. Cheer performs stunts during games in order to get the crowd excited. Stunting is dangerous, and supervisors need training and certification before they are able to start.
“The training was time-consuming and informative,” Stoner said.
Remmers was worried about stunting at first, since she cares so much about everyone’s safety. Over time, she is becoming more comfortable with it.
Their favorite part about coaching cheer so far is that they have gained more of an appreciation for everything cheer does. They also said they like how the unification of the teams has increased since they began coaching both dance and cheer.
“We were unaware of how many extra events cheerleaders are responsible for, and how highly involved they are within the community,” Stoner said.
During the summer, Stoner had the two teams play flag football together in order to learn more about football. The mix of cheerleaders and dance team members made interesting football teams, and it was a fun experience for them.
“We are constantly planning when to have practices, since both teams practice in the morning around the same time,” Remmers said.
The future of HHS cheerleading is not set, since Stoner and Remmers are not positive they will stay coaching the cheer team.
“This is a trial year, and we will decide later on if we want to continue coaching the cheer team next year,” Stoner said.
