DISCLAIMER: This piece is a reflection of the personal opinion of the writer and holds no reflection for the opinion or beliefs of any third party.
In the years since its construction, the Sentinel High School cheer team has become accustomed to utilizing the wrestling room for practices during the wrestling team’s off-season, and other spaces once winter sports officially begin. Despite these practices being scheduled and confirmed, the cheer team has found the space already occupied throughout September and October when they go to begin practice.
This conflict in schedules has led to frustrations and a lack of understanding of the situation from the cheer team.
The Sentinel High School sports system operates under a strict scheduling system when it comes to requesting practice spaces. In order for a team to request a practice space – such as the main or auxiliary gymnasiums – they must submit a request to the sports secretary, Izzy Gambini, who organizes all scheduling requests from Sentinel’s sports teams.
Gambini’s process begins when the various coaches of the Sentinel sports teams submit their requests to her via email. For seasonal sports such as basketball or wrestling, these requests are typically done during the summer of the previous year with alterations being made in the weeks leading up to the start of their season. Cheer, on the other hand, is constantly in season, so the coach, Madyson Kellogg, sends in her requests at the beginning of each month.
When Kellogg submits these requests to Ms. Gambini, she does not request a specific practice space such as the main or auxiliary gymnasiums, she is “just requesting a space”, and the request is booked into an available room (in this case, the wrestling room). Although these requests were not only received, but confirmed for the cheer team to be in the wrestling room throughout September and October, they were repeatedly replaced to accommodate the wrestling team throughout these months.
Sentinel Athletic Director Joshua Jannusch explained the many factors that have led to the repeated miscommunication and errors in the scheduling. He explained that in years past, the wrestling team would submit their booking requests for the wrestling room during the summer prior to their season so the requests would already be present and accounted for. This includes the open gyms “as a kind of place holder” that would be blanketed over the entire week. From there, they would account for which days the wrestling team didn’t have practice and give the room to cheer. However, due to the change in staff at the beginning of the new year, these requests were never entered.
Because of this, the cheer team was able to receive confirmation that they would be able to use the wrestling room, while the wrestling team was following the trend of previous years where they would have access to the room as normal for open mats before the start of their official season.
Despite attempts to clarify the situation, the cheer team has been required to repeatedly bounce between the wrestling room, the cafeteria, and the upper balconies for their daily practices. And although this left the cheer team understandably frustrated, this frustration was not aimed at any specific person or group.
While changing the location of practices may not seem like a major inconvenience for a team that is flexible enough to hold practices everywhere from the main gym to the front lawn, the process not only takes up valuable practice time, but also requires pushing a 125+ pound mat off of the main gym stage, past the volleyball teams, through the main hall, and into the cafeteria where all of the tables and chairs have to be moved to the back half of the room at the beginning and end of practice. When the team has access to a cart to place the mat on, it still requires pushing the mat up half a flight of stairs, squishing it into the elevator, and carting it down the main hallway.
While the wrestling team has been willing to split the wrestling room in order for both teams to be able to practice, cheer as a sport it is typically very loud and there are concerns that this arrangement will disturb the wrestlers and cause further tension.
There is no reason for the cheer team to be made a priority over other sports teams. However, a solution is overdue, whether that be relinquishing the wrestling room for the remainder of the season, or splitting the room between the two teams as necessary. Once an agreement has been made, cheer will be able to practice with complete certainty of when and where they are allowed to do so. This will make it significantly easier to accommodate for the time that is required to transfer the team to another location.
Smoothing over certain kinks in the current system may take time, but the sooner it is done, the sooner Sentinel sports can once again operate together rather than in opposition of each other.
