Cheerleading comes down to a simple equation for coach Diane Conlee, who has four state titles in two decades at Siuslaw High School.

It's equal parts team spirit and community spirit.

"We have a community that does an amazing job of supporting sports and athletes here," says Conlee, who welcomed 17 athletes to practice this fall.
"I just feel that we should give back. We need to give back."

Her 2015-16 squad features three seniors, two juniors, six sophomores and six freshmen.

"We had so many come out, that we're going to have a junior varsity team for the first time in years," she says. "It's exciting to have a full JV and a full varsity."

That's quite a handful for Conlee, who has no assistants and who lost team captain Kennedy Roylance to graduation.

"We have no team captain yet this year, but all five returning girls are amazing leaders, and all fully capable of being captain," she says.

The team has jumped right in to Conlee's rigorous training regimen of two to two and a half hours of workouts each school day.

The basic workout was designed by the National Cheerleaders Association to improve flexibility and jump height.

"That's our primary workout," says Conlee. "We also do a lot of (running) stairs, a lot of planks, we'll do sit-ups. We do a lot of stunting (building pyramids) and a lot of leg raising, so they need (both) a strong upper body and lower body."

Fall sports are something of a bootcamp for the team. Cheerleading, for competition purposes, is considered a winter sport by the Oregon Schools Activities Association (OSAA), which will hold its championship Feb. 13 at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland.

"We start developing our routine right at the end of the football season," says Conlee. "We want to start using the skills we worked on in the fall to develop that routine by November."

All that work, all those skills, are put to music and the words to a cheer for the 150 seconds (2 and a half minutes) the athletes will have to perform at the state meet.

"All that stuff comes into play," she says. "The choreography is a challenge."

The sport has developed much-more demanding scoring requirements over the years.

"The rules are very specific now for how many tumbling runs for a team of 12," she says. "If you want to get the most points on jumps, it's four jumps connected to a tumbling move.

"You know what the top is, and you have to keep shooting for that all the time."

Cheerleading is more than just a rigorous activity, at six months (Aug. 17-Feb. 13) the longest sport of the school year. It's also a great opportunity for community involvement.

"We try to do community service every month," says Conlee, whose athletes did a handful of events over the summer, including the Bark for Life in June, the Friends of Florence Ice Cream Social in July and the Relay for Life in August.

It's more than showing up and cheering at the school's athletic events.

"We do different things in the community. We usually do something at the elementary school (where Conlee teaches)," she says. "We have done presentations on bullying, on drug awareness, the Walk Against Domestic Violence.

"We're out there, we're out there."

The opportunity to perform community service is every bit as compelling to her athletes as the opportunity to improve and perform their demanding routines.

"They really enjoy having an activity where they can create a lot of memories," says Conlee. "They love community service, they love going to the elementary school, they love giving back."

It's a winning formula of team spirit and community involvement.