PROVINCETOWN — It’s T-minus-one day until the first-ever halftime show for seven cheerleaders at practice on Feb. 15. Fifth-grade energy abounds, and arms punch high. Then the cardboard parcel of black-and-white pom-poms appears, and the cheers begin, one after another, with hardly a breath in-between.
Jayla Graybill, 10, started dancing in Chicago when she was seven. Between numbers at twice-weekly cheer practices, she does handstands that fall into perfect backbends. A teammate steps through the choreography with the team’s coach, Darlene Van Alstyne. One girl spins another and, arms linked, they make wide circles. Two others stand by, interlaced in a hug.
That’s all happening right in the gym where the team will perform a routine to Rihanna’s “Work” the next day, between the second and third quarters of the student vs. faculty basketball game.
“I don’t like to prevent children from being children,” says Van Alstyne. She’s decked out in a bright blue spiky mullet wig — it’s spirit week at school. “We work between the sillies.”
The former town clerk in Provincetown, Van Alstyne now works in human resources at the school. It’s her first year coaching cheer, but her every word to the cheerleaders (“my girls,” she calls them) lands like a divine imperative.
“With excitement!” Van Alstyne shouts when a cheer starts out somewhat muted, and the squad’s volume surges. The pom-poms fly higher, the claps echo, and the stomps take on a sense of purpose.
“We have zero days left to put this together!” Van Alstyne says, and something slides into place with fifth-grade focus. It’s settled: the girls will take their time entering the gym as Rihanna’s intro kicks off.
Van Alstyne’s enthusiasm comes from decades of anticipation: she dreamed of being a cheerleader, but between extracurriculars like band and theater she never had the time. Her yearning for the sport, she says, was “all about the outfits, the pom-poms, the thought that somebody might throw me up in the air and catch me.”
Although the Provincetown team’s routine isn’t quite there yet, the benefits of their letting loose after a long school day are on full view: they’re learning to work together, support their classmates, and radiate school spirit.
As the start of the basketball game approaches the next day, the sillies are subdued. Clad in their jerseys and pleated skirts, the girls admit to feeling a bout of stage fright.
The routine isn’t totally memorized, one girl says. “It might look weird” if she messes up the halftime show, another says. At least one is on another wavelength: “The locker room is cool,” she tells a reporter.
Then the game’s starting whistle sounds. The team’s “Pump it up!” cheer gives way to a rhythmic, gym-shaking chant of “MYP,” which stands for the “middle-years program” — the sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade basketball players who are up against the teachers.
The first half of Friday’s game is largely a battle of heights, with the youngest of the middle-years student players on the court. The faculty takes possession of the ball, and the cheerleaders chant “Defense!”
The cheers continue even when Van Alstyne steps away for a moment. “Five, six, seven, eight,” the team carries on, with students in the stands joining in.
When Rihanna’s song comes on at halftime, five cheerleaders saunter in from the corners, as planned, and even though the faculty are up 16-4, they deliver the cheeriest routine imaginable. During rapper Drake’s part, they each do a solo number, with a swivel of the hips and a twirl.
In the second half, the eighth-grade players, many of them post-growth spurt, take the court. A student scores a three-pointer right away. The students intercept the faculty team’s passes and send the ball down the court with confident, over-the-shoulder ease. The cheers pick up steam.
“Let’s go, MYP!” erupts louder than ever from the cheer squad, prompting a gym-wide crescendo that rattles the bleachers, and a player on offense nods at the cheerleaders from mid-court and offers a quick thumbs-up.
The students win the game. Courtside, the cheerleaders check in with each other with “I’m happy they won!” and “My throat hurts so bad!”
Van Alstyne is brimming with pride for her girls. “I loved their halftime show,” she says. “The fact that they went up there and did it knowing it wasn’t going to be perfect made my day.”
Zennea Plummer, 10, who is the cheer team co-captain with Shania Marriott, says she was relieved by the performance.
“At first I was scared,” she says, “but everyone was encouraging us.” She says being part of the cheer team has her thinking of running track next year. “I like the adrenaline,” Plummer says. At this game, the biggest thrill came during her solo, which she improvised, she says.
Jayla Graybill says she’s relieved the crowd seems not to have noticed mistakes in the halftime show. Cheerleading has been fun for her — the dancing and the audience, especially. She’s thinking of playing basketball next year.
“I like people cheering for me,” she says.
There are going to be plenty of cheerleaders next year, Graybill predicts. More than 10 students from the fourth grade — you can’t be on the squad until fifth — have already told her they plan to join.
To future cheerleaders, she says: “You’re going to love the attention.”
Van Alstyne says she’s game for year two, and she’s hoping some boys join then, too. “I’m already thinking of cheers,” she says.
