The competition cheer season continued last Saturday in Dawson County, and Gilmer High was forced to hobble through another event.
GHS has been hit hard by seasonal illness and injuries, and their lineup needed more adjustments.
“We had over half of our team out with some sort of sickness or injury, which I know has been a running trend,” said head coach Naomi Esparza. “It really caught up to us this Saturday. Never in my coaching years has this happened before.
“On Friday when we realized who all we had out, because some of them weren’t officially out until Friday, it kind of left me scratching my head. Even COVID didn’t affect us this bad.”
GHS took the floor with those who were able and scored a 53 to place third among the five Class 3A teams at the event. Dawson took first ahead of East Forsyth.
“We had one stunt group that was building so we had seven girls on the floor who were able to build stunts. Everyone was pretty much out with an injury, or they were a flier or another part of their stunt group was hurt.
“They still competed, and I was really proud of that. Our seniors made that call to preserve through some of their injuries and go. They were really encouraging and just had fun with the routine. We made a bunch of changes prior to everyone getting hurt, and the judges seemed to really like that.”
Gilmer is off this week, and Esparza hopes to have the entire team back by Friday. That will give them a little over a week to prepare for the region competition at Dawson County, Nov. 7.
“We don’t want to make any more changes. What we want to do is take what we’ve got and make sure we’re ready to go in terms of health and our routine. We just want to take a good, clean routine to region and see what we can get out of it,” Esparza said.
“I think we can definitely see a bump in our scores, and that’s all I care about as a coach. Cheerleading teaches a lot of life lessons, and I think perseverance is one of them. It’s definitely less about where we’ll place at region or state. Sometimes your season isn’t going to go perfect, but the way you react to those situations is what brings out your true character.”