Acelyn Sutton: From Varsity Captain to Varsity Coach
Acelyn Sutton, former captain of Santa Barbara City College Cheer (SBCC), takes on her fifth coaching experience as the new coach of the Samo Cheer Team. Sutton is bringing both determination and passion to cheer practice everyday, encouraging the team to try their best and inspiring them to constantly improve.
Apart from coaching at Samo, Sutton is currently a member of the California State University Northridge Cheer Team. Although Sutton expresses the difficulty of the commitment she has taken on cheering for a college, her genuine admiration for the sport and motivation to continue improving keeps her tied to cheerleading.
Sutton, having grown up in Santa Barbara, has been a gymnast since she was a kid. She started cheering when she was a freshman in high school and even became the varsity captain of her high school’s cheer team. Over the years, Sutton has coached JV cheer at one of her local high schools in Santa Barbara, junior high cheer, as well as two separate private cheer teams.
“Every coaching job, every team that I’m on affects what I think and what I do,” Sutton said. “I get to see a lot of different perspectives from different kinds of coaches to different kinds of athletes, to students and people who aren’t on the team. Coaching junior high was definitely interesting, having that younger perspective of where these kids are from has given me a lot to think about with the older ones, because everyone comes from somewhere.”
Despite her substantial accomplishments, Sutton’s cheering journey hasn’t always gone according to plan. SBCC Cheer hadn’t always been considered an official team, for a while, it was a club because they didn’t have a coach. This led them to being denied access to cheer on the SBCC campus. Regardless of this, Sutton expressed she was happy with just a club, as long as she was able to pursue her devotion to cheerleading.
“I specialize in competing, Sutton said. “That’s something I love to do. A lot of the teams in my area didn’t get the opportunity to compete, and I didn’t when I was in high school [either]. So that’s something I feel really strongly about. I want the girls to hit a zero at their competitions and be as sharp and as strong as they can possibly be, in all their stunts and everything else.”
Sutton explains that her injured finger, which has forced her to take a hiatus from cheer, made her unable to perform the cheerleading moves she's used to practicing regularly. Her dedication becomes apparent while she uses this break as a drive to get stronger, coming to a realization of how important cheering is for her.
“Part of the reason why I want to coach is because I’m a cheerleader and I want to give other girls and other people that experience. It’s just been such an important part of my life,” Sutton said.
Coach Sutton sets the bar for inspiring young girls to chase their dreams of cheerleading, presenting competitiveness as well as her own goal to keep on with her career in cheering.
Ileana De La Cerda / The Samohi
New cheer coach Acelyn Sutton is excited to lead the cheer team into another exciting seaso