By Christina Burke

Staff Writer

With every sharp move and loud yell, cheerleaders work hard to motivate and represent our school. Beyond every cheer squad is one great cheer coach who loves the sport.

Specifically for Tiffany Ganss, there is also love of the high school environment.

Ganss is the new varsity cheerleading coach at Coppell High School. Her passion for the sport has lead her to eight years of coaching experience, all which has taken place in Coppell. After seven great years of running the cheerleading program at Coppell, Ganss admited that she was getting burned out.

“I needed a break, and the kids and their parents needed to experience a different style of leadership,” Ganss said. 

After taking two years off, she is back and ready for another great year at CHS taking the spot of Brynela Taylor who ran the program in Ganss’ absence.

“I missed working closely with a group of girls, and I missed being involved,” Ganss said.

The Coppell JV cheer coach, Jodie Deinhammer, has worked with Ganss for a long time. The two look forward to yet another great year together.

“She is fun to work with, very organized, and she knows her stuff. She is very knowledgeable and creative,” Deinhammer said. “We work well together”.

Ganss’ favorite things about coaching and teaching at a high school include working with kids and getting to know them personally.

“My cheerleaders are different from the kids in my classes,” Ganss said. “I want the girls to enjoy being a high school cheerleader.”

Senior varsity cheerleader Haley Cook loves working with Ganss and is looking forward to a great year of cheer.

“Ganss is a great coach. She is always on top of things and prepared to get us looking good for Friday nights and pep rallies,” Cook said. “She’s supportive of everything that we do and I can vouch for all the girls when I say that we love her”.

Although she enjoys high school cheer now, Ganss never suspected she would  have ever taken the position of cheer coach. After being on the drill team in high school, and achieving the position of captain senior year, she continued in to Baylor University where she was on the pom squad. It was here where she learned to love not only dance, but also cheer too. There was no opening for a drill team coach when she came to Coppell, so she compromised for cheer, which has a mix of dance in it, and liked it.

As far as the CHS environment, she enjoys being able to work with people outside of her department.  Standing as the senior class sponsor, she loves getting to know the seniors that she doesn’t have in her classes.

Competition season is a huge importance to our cheerleaders at CHS. Although they lost many seniors, the group of girls is still anticipating to do well this year.

“They have what it takes if they want to work hard,” Ganss said.

She has faith in her girls and should be able to lead them to victory.