It’s Friday night and everyone’s watching the Bowie Bulldogs play football. Bryana Bauhs is no different as she will attend games on Friday, however, she is more focused on the people in front of the stands. The cheerleaders. Bryana Bauhs isn’t just a cheer fan, she’s the new Bowie cheer head coach.
Bauhs’ journey to becoming Bowie’s head cheer team coach is a very unique story from other coaches.
“I was originally coming to Bowie this summer to be an assistant coach,” Bauhs said. “But, when I got here they said there was an opening for head coach and I got the job.”
Bauhs isn’t new to coaching, as, before becoming Bowie’s head cheer team coach, she was a coach at Bastrop High School. She is also a former collegiate cheerleader.
“I coached [cheerleaders] just like how my coaches used to coach me in college and that really helped me become a better coach,” Bauhs said. “All the conditioning and drills that we run are ones that I learned from my college coaches, so I owe a lot to them.”
Even with the college cheerleading experience, Bauhs has plenty of coaching tools to learn.
“This is new for me because I’ve never coached a football game-style [traditional] cheer team,” Bauhs said. “But I think the team has been really supportive and I think I’ll be able to help the team improve their traditional cheer.”
Bowie’s previous coach, Alyssa Paramski, has more of a dance background, and has moved over to assist with the Silver Star Program. Senior captain Aisley Bennett, who had both as coaches, has noticed the differences.
“Coach Bauhs has a lot of cheer experience, which I think is really going to help us improve,” Bennett said. “She makes us do conditioning which was new to us, but it really helps us become better and stronger.”
Bennett, who used to do competitive club cheer, is used to less intense training in school cheer, as there are more restrictions on what coaches can do. However, Bauhs has really kicked up the intensity for the cheerleaders.
“She’s already pushed us really hard,” Bennett said. “We’ve already gone full out, which is when we do all of our skills and sections twice. It’s a pretty big deal because the last two years we only went full out twice before the competition and we’ve already done it earlier which helps a lot.”
Bauhs was brought in as a head coach during the summer. So, it was a quick transition for sophomore varsity cheerleader Vivi Ryman-King, who had only been in the program for a year.
“I think the teams reacted pretty well,” Ryman-King said. “Everything flows really smoothly still, and our team seems to be working a lot better together even with the coaching change.”
The coaching change hasn’t just been hard for Bauhs, as Bennett, the cheer captain, has taken on more responsibilities than usual.
“It was hard on my part because I had to help her know all of the cheer routines that we do, but I also had to tell the team that not everything will stay the same with the new coach, which was upsetting to them,” Bennett said. “It’s my job to make us the best we can be so I had to tell the team that even though they wouldn’t like it.”
Cheer has two seasons: football and competitive cheer. While they do overlap, they are completely different, leading the cheer team to have to practice both at the same time.
“Unfortunately, our competition season is during football season,” Bauhs said. “If I had known I would be the head coach before the summer I would’ve focused summer practices on football, so we would be able to practice our competitive routine during the school year.”
Even with the challenges of two seasons the cheer team still keeps morale high with the high workload.
“She always puts the team first, which is like a pretty big deal considering she has a lot of things going on outside because she just became the coach half a month before school started,” Bennett said. “I think it’s just the fact that she’s still putting the team first is really helping us stay excited and cheer well even with the change.”
Bauhs has set the bar pretty high already in her first year as a head cheer coach and hopes to not only meet those but exceed them.
“We definitely should make finals, there’s no reason why we don’t make finals,” Bauhs said. “My goal, of course, is first place at finals.”
