Jock in the box: Jhalia barber

Brianna cruz

staff reporter

B: How do you balance sports with school and your outside life?

J: Well just the thought of knowing that if I don’t get good grades and don’t focus in school, that I can’t play the sports that I play, so just knowing that not doing what I need to in school will have consequences that relates to me playing sports. And on the outside it all correlates to doing good in school.Like they won’t even look at you on the outside if you don’t do what you're supposed to do in school, so just knowing that school comes first and then my sports after.

B: Do you think you will continue these sports after highschool?

J: Yes, that’s what I plan on doing.

B: What’s your plan after highschool?

J: I wanna go into the nursing field. I don’t know exactly what yet but I know that I wanna go into that.

B: what motivates you to do these sports?

J: I’ve always had a strong support system, so when I picked up basketball and cheer, everybody always supported me. My coaches, they push me to be the best I can be in my sports.

B: Do any of your family do these sports too?

J: Yes, my sister did basketball and cheer. My mom and dad played basketball. 

B: Since when have you started these sports?

J: I’ve been doing basketball since I was 5 and I picked up cheer around fourth grade.

B: Are you proud of any accomplishments?

J: Yes, in basketball I’m captain and I made varsity my freshman and sophomore years, and for cheer.

B: It’s women’s history month. How do you feel about women athletes that work as hard as the men but still get paid less and watched less?

J: I feel like it’s not fair. We gotta raise awareness for the women that don't get a lot of popularity, such as the men. It’s like no reason for it to be happening and I feel like it needs to be changed, cause it’s just as interesting to watch as the men.

B: Do you have a female athlete you admire?

J: For basketball, I like A’ja Wilson,n mshe plays for the Las Vegas Aces. For volleyball, I like the Nebraska volleyball team and Simone Biles, who is good at gymnastics.

B: How would you describe this season in basketball?

J: I feel like we had a good season for basketball,  we were kind of losing for the first half, but then we really picked up the second half, it’s probably our best record ever for the school even though we lost for regionals.

B: Will you continue these sports throughout highschool?

J: yes.

B: What do you look forward to next basketball season?

j: Even though we did lose a lot of seniors, we do have incoming freshmen and maybe some transfers, so just picking up where we left off and doing better than we did this year, going farther in the playoffs and having a better record.

B: What’s one word that describes you.

J: Dedicated.

B: What’s your favorite memory being with the Cheer/step team

J: My favorite memory was doing the step show last year.We do a lot of little shows that go up into the step show but we do really take a lot of time preparing for the step show.So that was really fun.

B: How long does it take to learn a new dance?

J: It depends, like how long it is or how difficult it is but I would say like 3 to 4 days.

B: How do you handle stress?

J:Since I do play a lot of sports and am very involved, I would say time management is a big thing because you’re gonna be all over the place if you don’t be organized with everything that you do.