Assistant coach Gwen Barker Q&A
What are the biggest challenges or struggles with such a big team?
I think getting frustrated is probably a challenge. Any team has frustrating moments when they try to do new things and it doesn’t go as they thought it would go, but we’re remembering that these are hard things they’re trying to do and motivating them to be driven to continue to want to work hard and encouraging them to know that they’re good enough to do it. They have a lot of talent on this team, and it just has to be pulled out of them.
What values do you think are keeping this team together?
Trying to work together as a unit, remembering that there’s no “I” in a team, but the whole team has to work together to hit skills. When you’re working in stunt groups, you have to have every single person participating and working together to make the skills work, and leaning on each other.
What is your favorite memory from this year?
My favorite memory is watching the girls get really excited to hit difficult skills that they had not done before. The excitement in their face, it’s just the genuine joy.
If you could describe this team, how would you do that and why?
Driven and excited about gaining new skills and competing.
What is your vision for this year’s team?
My vision is really unity, school spirit, and connection to West Albany. [Over] the past several years our cheerleading team has been coached by some great coaches that knew [how to do] good cheerleading, but weren’t working at West Albany. And while they were successful in competitions and had some pretty high-level skills, they weren’t nearly as engaged with the culture [we have at West].
What makes you a good coach?
My coaching philosophy for cheerleading is a little different. I’m very school-focused. Competition is really important to me, but it’s not the only thing. I made this really known, and it’s definitely one of the reasons some people came back that had quit or why people joined who had never cheered before. I am allowing the cheerleaders to be on the team all year, but still be able to play another sport. It makes scheduling really hard. We have volleyball and soccer. We have people that are going to play basketball. We have people in the band and choir. But my philosophy is that I will build my cheerleading schedule and practice schedule around those other sports. Cheerleading is a year-round sport, and I don’t want people to have to give up other things in order to cheer. I want them to be able to do more.
With the team so big, is recruiting still a factor?
We went to the middle schools in the spring and handed out little flyers at lunch and tried to encourage people to try out. And I did put quite a bit of posters around the school.
There are a lot of freshmen on the team this year. How do you decide who gets to cheer for Varsity?
Right now, we have no freshmen on our varsity team. It’s something that I’m open to in the future, but in order for that to happen, it would need to be someone who has really extensive cheer experience, and not only has gymnastic skills like some of our JV athletes do, but also has true cheer skills. I think it’s good for young athletes to spend time on a JV team with their peers and to build up their skills before they reach varsity. And I don’t pull athletes up, even if it would potentially benefit our varsity team in competition in terms of skills on the score sheet because I want our JV team to compete and to be successful as a team and have it not be the type of program where I only focus on the success of our varsity.
What is your favorite memory from this year?
I think we had a really great cheer camp. My goal was to make it as close to a sleepaway camp as possible. We had instructors that came in and taught the actual cheerleading portion and so we had about six hours of really, really difficult cheer instruction. There were injuries, tears, and it was very hard. We were overwhelmed as a team, but we had team dinners every night with themes and we played games. It was really good for the team to bond with each other and support each other [as they were] going through some things that were really difficult, both physically and mentally. It had a really good mix of very, very physically demanding elements and some light hearted fun.
What are the biggest struggles or challenges with such a big team?
The biggest struggle is building what feels like a brand new culture. We have thirteen seniors, and incorporating them into the program and giving them leadership, while also trying to teach everyone where they needed to be, was certainly challenging. Another is [that] we had two thirds of our team that have never been cheerleaders before. In addition, I brought back cheers and chants. West Albany is really strong in tradition, but [our] cheerleading had really lost that. So trying to teach new material from old traditions to a bunch of new people was hard. I also didn’t have assistant coaches until August, and so I had to juggle two teams. But now we have great JV coaches that have done an amazing job stepping up and really leading that team. They know what they’re doing, and they care about West Albany culture and tradition. They care about the athletes.
