Central Oregonian

Cowgirl cheerleaders perform at Holiday Bowl in San Diego

Five of Crook County High School’s cheerleaders are among a group of 250 that performed at halftime of the Dec. 28 bowl game

LON AUSTIN/THE CENTRAL OREGONIAN

Members of the Crook County High School cheerleading squad perform a stunt at halftime of a recent CCHS?basketball game. Five of the cheerleaders recently performed at halftime of the Holiday Bowl in San Diego.

Lon Austin

It was a whirlwind trip.

Five members of the Crook County High School cheerleading squad and cheer coach Stacy Koch flew to San Diego for a week during Christmas break to perform at the Holiday Bowl

“It was an amazing opportunity,” said DeziRae Ott. “It was a lot of fun.”

The game, which is normally held on a Thursday, was moved up a day this year, and according to Koch, that made the week especially rushed.

“They generally have Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to rehearse, and this year they were trying to put three days practice into two,” she said. “The first day they rehearsed 11 hours straight.”

The team was at practice every morning no later that 6 a.m., and according to Koch, never returned to their hotel until at least 11 p.m.

Prior to the actual halftime performance the Tuesday evening dress rehearsal was the only time that everyone participating in the halftime performance were all in one place.

“The girls rehearsed both days with music,” Koch said. “The only opportunity that they had to actually practice with the the band was during the dress rehearsal.”

After rehearsing late into the evening the night before the group was up at 4 a.m. Wednesday morning to get ready for the annual Big Bay Balloon Parade. The parade, which is similar to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, only larger, has the largest collection of parade balloons in the world.

“The parade is a really big deal,”?Koch said. “But it felt pretty rushed. We had only an hour from when the parade ended until we were supposed to be at the stadium for the game. The whole week was just bam, bam, bam.”

Once at the football game, the cheerleaders had front row seats near the 50-yard line.

Then came the halftime performance.

“It was really loud the whole time,” said Esther Wiechert. “You had to be inside your own head. It was intimidating at first when we got down there, but we all knew what we were supposed to do, so once we started it was really cool.”

Koch said that the performance went well.

“It was a tribute to all the troops,” she said. “They had hundreds of marines on the field, and they all walked out with the flag. The entire performance is red, white, and blue.”

Koch added that there was a fireworks display during the entire halftime performance as well as the cheerleaders and a band composed of high school musicians from all over the country.

“I had never been to the game before, and the girls were all saying, ‘What do we do?’ because they had only seen a part of the performance during rehearsals,” Koch said. “It was just amazing when it all came together. It was pretty surreal — pretty overwhelming.”

“I think the best part of the performance was that we were on TV,” said Haley Brady. “It was really confusing during rehearsals, and it didn’t seem like we got a lot of individual attention, but everything turned out good.”

Following the game, the cheerleaders still had one more busy day. On Thursday, they spent the morning going to three separate dance seminars. The seminars were put on by the San Diego Charger cheerleaders (the Charger Girls), as well as choreographers C.C. Kelley and Bonnie Storey. Kelley is primarily known for her work on Beonce and JZ Knight music videos, while Storey is probably best known for her work on Michael Jackson videos and the High School Musical movies.

“I liked the Charger cheerleaders the most,” said Wiechert. “It was cool to see how much different pro cheerleading is from high school.”

Koch added that the Charger Girls taught the girls a dance that the Crook County cheerleaders plan to perform at a halftime performance later this year.

Following the seminars, the girls spent the afternoon at SeaWorld where they attended an awards banquet and dance.

“SeaWorld was a lot of fun,” Ott said.

Not everyone on the Crook County High School cheerleading squad was able to afford the trip. Nonetheless, Koch believes the experience was more than worth the trip, and she hopes to take another group to the Holiday Bowl again in the future.

“I would love to do it again, but it’s very expensive,” she said. “I think if we do it again, we will plan for a year to fundraise and then go the following year. I’m ideally an all-or-nothing kind of person, but it was such a huge opportunity that I was willing to take whoever could go this year.”

“We want to thank everyone that made this possible,” said Wiechert. “From those that helped us do the fundraising to our coach and the choreographers, and all the people that came to the game.”

Now that they are back, Savannah Connell summed up the experience for all the cheerleaders.

“It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience getting to cheer at a college bowl game,” she said. “I think if anybody has an opportunity for any type of experience like this. Even though it is a lot of money and a really hard goal to work for, you should definitely take the experience.”