She stands on the sidelines of the football field, hyping the crowd up, feeling the energy all around her. Junior Evelyn Rodriguez said that the excitement at the football games is one of her favorite parts of cheer. 

“Whenever you get underneath those Friday-night lights, you just get that feeling of excitement, that pump, that adrenaline,” Rodriguez said. “You hear the band play, and you hear the Charmers poms ruffling, and the football players before they come out of their hut. It’s just that feeling.” 

But cheer isn’t the only school activity she’s involved with. Between NHS, AVID, AP classes, and a variety of clubs, her schedule is packed. 

“If you see my schedule, like my calendar, it’s just all booked,” Rodriguez said. “Everyday [there’s] something new.” 

Rodriguez has never taken on-level courses in her high school years. She said she enjoyed the challenges AP classes gave her.

“I take school very seriously, academically, for the future, and to keep myself in check,” Rodriguez said. “I like to challenge myself. I like to prove that I can do more than what I think I can, and I like feeling accomplished.”

Alongside self-fulfillment, Rodriguez said she feels high school is an opportunity that others don’t take advantage of.

“I feel like a lot of people under-appreciate school and how much of an opportunity it is,” Rodriguez said. “People don’t appreciate it. I think knowledge is literally power. The more the you know, the more you understand everything.”

After high school, Rodriguez plans to go to either Texas Tech University or Arkansas State University, and she plans to major in economics and then go to law school to become an attorney. She said she decided on economics, instead of history or psychology like she was originally thinking, due to advice from one of her teachers, Marcie Duley.

“[Duley] says it’s kind of like a backup plan,” Rodriguez said. “If you don’t pass the LSAT, then the degree that you finish with is history, and if you have the history degree, you become a history teacher. If you have a psychology degree, you become a psychologist. But, if you have economics, there’s a bigger field for a backup if it doesn’t work out.”

Rodriguez said she wants to become an attorney, and the idea stuck in her head after a conversation with one of her eighth grade teachers.

“In middle school, I wasn’t the best kid, I would always get into trouble with my friends,” Rodriguez said. “But, I was always the one to get myself out of those problems, those issues, I would talk my way out of it. [My teacher] just said, ‘I just know one day you’re going to become a lawyer or an attorney. Just come to me and visit whenever you get the degree.’ It just kind of stuck with me.”

Despite her success with classes, Rodriguez has struggled with a knee injury since middle school. Last year, her knee got worse after she tore her ACL, and it was difficult for her.

“It was really hard because I was in crutches,” Rodriguez said. “I was carrying everything. I still had to manage being in these clubs, these orgs. At cheer camp, it was really hard seeing my team out there, and me not being able to participate. It was a big challenge, but it taught me a lot of things, to appreciate me being able to walk now.”

According to Rodriguez, what helped her get through the tough time her knee injury gave her was her mom.

“I love my mom because she was there for me at every step of the way,” Rodriguez said. “She was there when I woke up from my surgery, and literally helping me go to the bathroom, shower, everything. She’s how I got through it.”

Rodriguez said that her mom helped her through more than just her injury; she helped motivate her through everything else in her life.

“She’s my stone, she’s my rock, she’s my everything,” Rodriguez said. “She’s the [reason] that I’m able to do all of this. She’s everything, she does everything.“