“Do it again! I know you girls got this, now show me you do!”

At practice, cheerleading captain Kane Holstead’s strong determination motivates the girls to work harder and to be perfect. It’s a hard goal to reach, however, and her serious face turns quickly into a smile as one of the girls cracks a joke.

Holstead is a veteran in the squad. She has seen the group go through its ups and downs. She even has seen it fall apart and single-handedly brought the squad back up again in the fall of ’07.

“It’s been hard work to keep this squad going, but it helps when you have such dedication and heart like the girls do this semester. It just makes all my hard work worth it to know that they are getting something out of it,” said Holstead.

However, the squad would not be where it is today without the help and experience of co-captain Tedi Butolph. Butolph has only been on the squad for a less than a year, but she came into the group with valuable experience.

“When I came to the squad, I brought some experience that they needed. It was around the same time that they started introducing sports to the school,” she said. “I think that the squad developed at a good time. Now, the school looks to us as part of the game.”

The squad has changed a lot since Holstead first entered OLLU in the fall of ’05. Today, the squad receives more recognition on campus.

Butolph said, “When I first came to the squad and would wear my uniform on game days, I’d get expressions from people like, ‘We have a cheerleading squad here?’ Now I get expressions from people like ‘Are you all gonna perform today?’ ‘Wow, you all are working really hard!’, ‘When are tryouts?’ ”

One big goal that the group has set for this year is to enter a cheerleading competition. It’s the first time since Holstead has been on the squad that the cheerleaders have even considered it.

“The girls expressed a big interest in attending a cheerleading competition when I first joined,” Butolph said. “So the goal Kane and I set out was for us to be physically prepared by April to attend. We set out to recruit girls whom we thought would be dedicated in working toward this goal.

“Although many of these girls have never had cheerleading experience, I believe that they have come a long way. In April, we will be attending the World Spirit Association Competition in South Padre,” she said.

Holstead added, “It’s amazing to see how hard these girls work. Cheerleading is painful, but they just walk it off and go right back into achieving a stunt. They don’t like to quit until they have it.”