“We love em’, yeah we love our Huskies! We love em’, yeah we love our Huskies!”

The Ritenour cheer team has been working hard the first few months of this school year to spread the Ritenour spirit throughout families and fans coming to watch the games. The years leading up to the class of ‘26 have been tough, but the team is resilient.

When cheerleaders are portrayed in movies, they are often seen as the leaders of the school. They hit peoples lunches out of their trays, body shame, steal other cheer teams routines, and look down on others in the school. At Ritenour, this does not seem to be the case.

“Mostly in real life, all of us are nice and we like to be friends with everybody. We like to be cool with everybody, and try to make everybody feel like they fit in,” senior Skye Hernandez said.

That does not mean the team did not have some of those stereotypical actions in the past.

“Last year there were definitely some cliques. But at the end of the day, we were a team, so we all had to get along,” Hernandez said.

The first week of this month, Ritenour cheerleaders performed at McCluer High School’s “Star Stomp N’ Shake Showcase,” which is an event where they performed their routines with other cheer teams in the surrounding area.

“We did pretty good there, we thought it was something like a competition, but it was just like a friendly showcase where everyone came and showed their team,” senior Richard Laurel said.

While movies often show toxic relationships between cheerleaders, whether it’s purposefully not catching a flyer, or acting like they have more status than others in your team, senior Le’Aira Howard said there is nothing like that on this team.

“Definitely non-toxic from what I have seen. I think like I said, we are all like just a big family. Everybody’s really nice to each other. If we ever need help with anything, we make it a very open community to help,” Howard said. “Especially with our captain Richard and our co captain Jalea. They are very nice and open. So I would definitely say we have a non toxic environment as of now.”

Howard referenced Laurel, who also happens to be the first male captain of the Ritenour cheer team.

“It’s my second year and I would say my biggest accomplishment of being a cheerleader is getting captained and being the first male captain in the whole written years of there being a cheer team,” Laurel said. “For me to only be my second year in the game with this, it feels like a real big accomplishment.”

Laurel does believe that being the only male on the team changes his role.

“I would not say I get treated differently, but I would say I would probably get held to a different standard with me being the only male on the team. Because I feel like I have to be louder than them. I have to, you know, stomp harder than them.”

Although the movies show cheerleader in a bad light, the Ritenour cheer team is breaking the stereotype.

“It would be more of an actual family than just a team,” Hernandez said.