By Taylor Davis — On Friday, Jan. 24 at the Quicken Loans Arena, the cheerleaders were offered a once in a lifetime opportunity to perform at halftime for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Logan Cole, the varsity cheerleading coach, made it her goal for the 2013-14 school year to get the squad as much exposure as possible.

“Coach explored several different performance opportunities for us and came across the Cleveland Cavaliers,” varsity cheerleading captain Brooklyn McDaniels said. “The Cavs are constantly seeking young talent to perform before and during games and we were eager to display our talent. It was amazing.”

After the event was set in stone, Cole was in charge of choreographing a new routine along with choosing popular music to go along with it.

“The whole routine was brand new, with a mix of music that is fairly new and great dance moves so that we can get the audience’s attention with more upbeat hip-hop songs,” varsity cheerleader Emily Esway said.

Although this opportunity was offered to many other schools and organizations, Cole made it possible for the cheerleaders to show their talent to all of Cleveland. She contacted the Cavaliers entertainment department via email regarding the performance.

“The experience was incredible. We walked out of the court saying we wished it wouldn’t have gone by so fast, “ McDaniels said. “Being under the bright lights surrounded by cameras and sports reporters was so exciting. We felt like celebrities all thanks to coach’s hard work.”

The biggest obstacle for the cheerleaders was being forced to learn the dance in four practices; which seems like no time at all.

“Typically it takes us quite a few practices to learn an entire dance,” Esway said. “We’re also responsible for learning new cheers and remembering all the old ones so it can get pretty stressful but it’s something we all enjoy.”

The squad learned many important life lessons from this experience. They not only learned how to adjust to a new environment, but they also learned how to remain closer as a team.

“I think we took a variety of different things from the performance. First off, we learned how to put on a show,” McDaniels said. “When watching the videos of the dance I saw a lot of sides of our cheerleaders that I had never seen before. Also, we learned how to adjust to a new environment, which is very important in this sport. This experience was unlike anything any of us have ever done before.”

The cheerleaders felt the experience helped them to bond as a team and will help them to improve their cheers and routines during the rest of the basketball season.

“We’d love to do it again and we thank Coach Logan and the Cavaliers rep dearly for giving us such an amazing opportunity,” McDaniels said.

[Updated Aug. 7, 2017: This article has been reformatted for consistency.]