Thank you Amanda Kapenga
By: Julia Brown
People view sports as a way to acknowledge players, yet they often forget about the important role coaches play. Amanda Kapenga is the girl’s competitive cheer coach. She has been coaching cheer for four years and truly believes in getting to know the girls as individuals and coaching them according to their personalities.
Amanda Kapenga, a former student of Hamilton High School, originally known as Amanda Cook, likes to create a connected atmosphere for the girls. She enjoys bringing unity and morale to the team to build those strong relationships. All players on the competitive cheer team value how she brings everyone together to create a good atmosphere and make it a good place to go every day.
Sophomore Korra Kapenga, daughter of Amanda Kapenga, captures the importance of the relationships her mom creates with the team.
¨She creates relationships with us by giving us team speeches every day.¨
Coach Kapenga said her motivation for coaching cheer is her ¨Love for cheer and the growth of the program.¨ She is here to help Hamilton High School and do good things for this community. She is building strong athletic athletes here at Hamilton High School. Giving them the option to pursue bigger dreams they may have.
Relationships! She truly believes in creating relationships around the way she coaches and the way she runs her practices.
First year on competitive cheer, Freshman Lily Bolger gives us insight into how practices run and captures what the atmosphere is like.
¨Lots of communication, and they care a lot if you are struggling.¨
Coach Kapenga can build these relationships and that allows her to communicate and notice if the girls are struggling and need help. This deserves a lot of thanks for being able to make that connection with the girls while making them better individuals and competitors.
Meanwhile, sophomore Emily Plockmeyer told us how she views practices.
¨ Encouraging, and gives a lot of constructive criticism, but in a good way.¨
A coach being able to give constructive criticism is building these girls mentally and physically. Which is not always an easy task, but she can achieve it. Coach Kapenga gives the feedback that the girls need to help them grow as individuals and help Hamilton High School grow its competitive cheer program.
Hamilton Community School needs to see the big picture, which is reflected in the great job Amanda Kapengs is doing for the competitive cheer team. She is taking time out of her day to help these high schoolers grow and become better individuals while having fun cheering. Finally, we need to value how much she is trying to build a connection between the girls and get them the support they need.
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