Former cheerleader, Anna Fletcher, has a journey like no others. Anna started cheerleading when she was three years old. She started her cheer journey at Memphis Pride, then moving to Memphis Elite, then Arlington Youth Sports team. When Anna got to middle school she cheered all three years for Arlington Middle School. Her freshman year and sophomore year at AHS, she was an active teammates on the JV and Varsity team. Avery Cook, her best friend, has been with her since one of the very first teams. “Anna was always the best on the team and was always the hardest worker,” says Avery. It was hard for Avery to watch Anna go through this because she had to quit the thing she loved the most, cheerleading.
During her sophomore year she was on the Memphis Pride all star team again. Anna says, “ The reason of me being so passionate was because I grew a family from cheer and it was my escape”. During Anna’s freshman year, she started coming down with a lot of autoimmune issues and was in and out of doctors. The doctors could not figure out what was going on. At the time she was cheering for two teams and her health continued to get worse and worse. Anna says, “ I missed more then 40 days of school and had to miss out on a lot”. When sophomore year hit, her health got so bad she had to be hospitalized many times. She knew she had to make make a decision between cheer and her life. She ended up quitting cheer sophomore year and says “I was heart broken.”
Junior year came around and she said she had to watch her friends compete and it was hard. In February, she had a awful episode and was in the hospital for a week. She says, “It was iconic because I was still watching my ex-cheer team in between my procedures”. Anna got a call from former cheer Coach, Luke Nowell, asking if she can come coach the AYS cheer team. Anna says “I was so excited to take this opportunity because I still got to be in the cheer world just in another light”. She also took up the opportunity to work in a cheer gym and coach classes. Anna is in a good place with her health currently and knows stepping back from cheer was the right decision. Anna Fletcher is a strong young women who will do anything for cheerleading .
