Coach spotlight – Nikki Valentino coaches for 20 plus years

Nikki Valentino has been a cheerleading coach at HAHS for over 20 years and also coached All-Star cheerleaders and had her own team. With Nikki being the coach the HAHS cheer squads have won 30 trophies. With the help of Nikki being the coach the cheer squad has also done 50 competitions and won 20 out of the 50, as a cheerleader, I would say Nikki is an amazing coach. She can easily tell what went wrong if something did and how to fix it so it does not happen again.

     Nikki is hard on us cheerleaders sometimes because she knows we can do what we have too. Like for example when the flyers do not lock their knees, she starts to get hard on them because she knows they can lock their knees and do the stunt. Or if one of the bases is not holding the foot right or not pushing, Nikki will get hard on them because she knows that they can do it. Or we are doing a chant and you are new she will go over it with you until you get it right. Overall Nikki is a great coach.

     Bella Byers, sophomore. “Nikki is one of the best coaches I have had. She likes to challenge us and I have been in cheer since kindergarten, so I like being challenged with new stuff even if it takes a while to get right. She tries her best as a coach to teach us newer things and to get us to as many competitions as possible. She also gives the girls on the squad motivation to do better with school,stunts and cheer in general. Overall in my opinion Nikki is a very sweet and amazing coach.”