Lawren Agnew

Rhea Burney shining bright during her senior game in the 2023-2024 cheer season. “All the Ventura games both football and basketball were really memorable especially last season’s football win,” Burney said. “We made a lot of memories throughout the entire [season], but those are like the things I remember the best.”

Building a foundation and leading her team to victory are just scratching the surface of what senior Rhea Burney has been doing in her extracurriculars throughout high school. As one of Buena’s cheer captains and president of the Black Student Union, Burney has been supporting her peers and teachers for three years now. 

Burney has been in cheer since she was young, and during her junior year at Buena, she did not think twice when she decided to join the school’s cheer team. The sport itself is not the only thing that makes Burney love the team so much.

“The bonds that I made with everybody [on the team] as well as a lot of friends I have now I became friends with because of cheer,” Burney said.

Being on the cheer team for three years now, Burney has learned a lot as both a teammate and leader. The team environment and experiences have helped shape who she is today as a person. Without the cheer team, Burney would not be where she is today.

“[She] makes it worth being [a part of the team] not everyone wants to come to practice and be yelled at all the time, but like she made it worth it,” Burney’s teammate senior Malia Kaluna said. “[She] always has a smile on her face.”

Burney plans to go to school to become a nurse. Burney has always felt that she just clicked in the medical field, and visiting a family member as a young girl was like finding a missing puzzle piece. She plans to attend a Historically Black University, in the fall to further her education in the medical field. Burney was able to make this decision through Buena’s Black Student Union Club, also known as BSU.

“In BSU we go on [college] tours. We just came back from Texas and Louisiana,” Burney said.  “We go look at historical colleges, and that’s something that I want to go to.”

As President of BSU, Burney is in charge of organizing fundraisers and figuring out which charities are most prominent for BSU to donate to. Most recently Burney received a student grant that was exclusive for students in the Ventura Unified School District from the Ventura Education Partnership and was one out of ten students in the district to receive one. 

“I applied for the grant just to help me and some other students that didn’t have the funding, the financial needs to be able to go [on the tours],” Burney said. “So that helped us it helped fund our trip, as well as our donations.”

Marcia Amegadzie is the BSU Advisor and has worked closely with Burney for three years now. Amegadzie helped Burney organize and execute the clothing drive for the homeless shelters earlier this year. 

“[Burney’s] a good leader because she knows how to listen,” Amegadzie said. “She has her ideas, but she’s also open to other people’s opinions.”

Burney’s newest fundraiser will be the Touch a Truck event; an educational event on first responder and blue-collar job vehicles which will be held in the Buena Stadium parking lot June 1, 2024. BSU has never organized this kind of fundraiser before and hopes it will be an epic success. 

“I’m going to give [Burney] credit for that. She’s leaving [her mark on the school],” Amegadzie said.