“What is competitive cheer?” something you might not know our school provides. This sport is made up of stunting, tumbling, jumps, dance, and exact performance. Normally people don’t see cheer as a real sport, but guess what it is. At competitions we are judged based on the difficulty, technique, and creativity of each of the elements listed above.
The stunting is made up of 4 positions. A main base, side base, back spot and flyer. Sometimes if needed there is also a front spot for extra support in the group. The two bases in the stunt group control the movement and power of the stunt by holding the flyers feet providing somewhere for the flyer to “stand” The back spot is the leader of each group. They hold onto the flyers ankles and legs while making the calls and counting during practices. The front spot is not essential to each stunt group so they are there for extra help and for transitional purposes. The flyer is almost self explanatory. They are the athletes who get lifted, tossed, or spun in the air by their bases. A must for each flyer is to have excellent core strength, superb flexibility, and eye-catching performance skills. A flyer is the main part of the routine to catch the audience’s attention.
Cheerleader’s tumbling shows the precise form and leg strength. The athlete is flipping in mid-air while rolling, tucking, springing, or twisting without taking a second thought. Currently jumps show the flexibility of a cheerleader and how much strength they use for a simple toe touch.
Finally we have the dance which is seen as a performance-based section.The facial expression, the sharpness and the movements. Entertainment and performance is key, it shows the creativity and hard work put into the routine. Cheer isn’t something you can just do, it takes time and practice to get where you want to be.
Cheerleading as a sport itself has been around for more than 100 years. The sport started out as something athletes can do to cheer other teams on like basketball and football. Over the years it’s become something completely different. A competitive sport made up of way more difficult skills. Typically the teams perform a 2 and a half minute routine and you might not think that’s a long enough time for a routine but if you experience it yourself you’d know the feeling.
Like in the name this sport is very competitive and the scoring is extremely important. If something in the routine gets messed up you can never just stop, you fix it and act like it didn’t happen. You go on no matter what happens unless of course someone gets injured. If a teammate forgets something during the routine you try and remind them without making it seem obvious. While doing counts sometimes you’ll hear a quick little reminder of what comes next just in case someone can’t remember.
It’s important to remember that you are in it together as a team and no matter what you can not have an attitude and get frustrated. You work it out and at the end of the day you hit that routine together as a team.