Cheer adapts to mascot change, encourages crowd to do the same
Seniors Kristina Callahan, and Lindsey Stone cheer with the rest of the cheerleaders during the football game on Oct. 22.
October 10, 2022
NESPA Winner: Sports Story, 2022
The Harbinger, Algonquin Regional High School, Northborough, MA
This season, the cheerleading team has modified many of their cheers due to the mascot change.
The decision to retire the Tomahawk in late April left Algonquin without a mascot, a key factor in cheer. The cheerleaders, who recently competed in Regionals and scored a 74 to move onto States this weekend, have worked to adjust to the change.
“We had to change seven cheers,” senior captain Kristina Callahan said. “We have 15, but we only actually do around 10, so we basically had to change half of them.”
Fortunately, they didn’t have to create any new cheers from scratch; they merely modified their existing cheers.
“We didn’t have to change any of the motions, just some of the words,” sophomore Olivia Mullen said. “Some words we used to replace T-Hawks were ‘Algonquin,’ ‘defense’ and ‘offense’.”
According to Callahan, it wasn’t always easy re-wording the cheers.
“We had to feel what sounded good too because there were a bunch of different things we could’ve changed T-Hawks to, but some sounded better than others,” Callahan said.
