At many sporting or community events everyone is likely to see cheerleaders. That could be high school cheerleaders at a Friday night football game or a glimpse of college level cheerleaders on TV cheering a Saturday football game, they all still serve the purpose of spreading school spirit all around and just being positive, even when their team is losing.
But, that is actually not always the case. Of course that is a cheerleader’s mindset, but there is a competitive mindset cheerleaders have that not many know about.
Many people only know cheerleaders as the girls with pom poms and mini skirts jumping around and cheering on the sidelines at many different school sport events. Many think their sole purpose is getting the crowd hyped up and excited. That is the goal at games, but there is another side to cheerleading that many people do not realize exists.
Shaler Area actually has one of the best known cheerleading teams in the nation under the leadership of Ms. Rebecca Troppman, who was a cheerleader for Shaler Area when she was in high school. She has first hand experience of this sports’ sudden growth of skill and competition level.
Troppman and the Shaler Area cheerleading teams experienced many ups and downs, especially going from winning nationals multiple times throughout the past few decades to then experiencing the pandemic where all the progress stopped.
Nationals, officially called National High School Cheerleading Championship (NHSCC), take place at the end of every competition season when teams compete against the teams from across the United States and showcase their routine.
“Covid was an interesting thing to go through. Now just building back up, watching the different areas, how they’re experiencing growth and starting some things over. The change of the way things are done from skills on the track while cheering on the football team to skills at competitions, just all different things and expectations,” Ms. Troppman said.
Cheerleading has evolved into a sport in itself.
“It all changed so rapidly, really the talent skill has gone up. The expectation of what is needed has definitely increased,” Troppman said.
But cheerleading takes a lot more effort than people realize. These athletes spend hour upon hours practicing and perfecting a 2-minute-and-30-second routine while still attending school sporting events and cheering on the sidelines.
Cheerleaders now compete at many different competitions locally and nationally against other schools, quite similar to competition cheer also known as all-star. High school and college cheer today has similar or even the same skill level of many all-star level cheer teams.
The majority of cheerleaders are on both their high school or college team and some type of competition team.
Now, what actually is the difference between competition or “all-star” and school cheerleading when now most high schools and colleges compete?
In all-star cheer, besides paying for a sparkly uniform, you are paying for the experience and memories. For example, at different competitions there may be the chance to meet many “cheerlebrities”, basically cheerleaders on different world wide famous teams that many other cheerleaders look up to.
Of course school cheerleading competition teams get similar opportunities; some competitions may be the same, some may be completely different.
No matter if you’re preparing for competition as a school cheerleader or all star cheerleader, these athletes tend to practice for hours on end. Practice is broken down among conditioning to working and perfecting every aspect of the routine, then finally full outs, when a team acts like its competing by performing every section with music, sharpness, facials, simply every aspect that is in a routine they compete.
For competition cheer many top girls or flyers (the girl being thrown at the top) are required to attend “flying classes” which can be once to a few times a week to perfect their flying abilities to stay in the air in their routine. These classes can range from an hour long to maybe two.
On top of flying classes, everyone (including school cheerleaders) are required to attend a tumbling class even if that’s just a once a week hour to hour and half class.
The majority of competition teams have “open gyms” which simply means the gym is open to anyone to come and perfect whatever they want. This could be going with a few other people and getting stunt reps in or just by yourself and perfecting your tumbling.
Most cheerleaders will get private lessons with coaches as well. These are short practices that an athlete will spend one on one time with a coach and rep whatever they choose to work on. There are two types of private classes, stunt and tumble privates.
Cheerleaders today put hours upon hours of work into these perfect routines, if they get hurt during practice or competing they are taught to push through and not show that they are in pain or complain about it, usually causing the injury to worsen. Most cheerleaders are constantly fighting for their spot on the team and always have to be on their A game at every practice, event, competition, game, you name it. The fear of being replaced is a real thing as anyone can replace anyone at any given moment or time for little to maybe no reason at all.
Overall, cheerleading takes a lot more effort than most people realize. Cheerleading now isn’t what it used to be by jumping around with pom poms saying go team, it is a sport in itself. Funny enough, like old times people still say cheer is not a sport when these athletes go through so much mental and physical work, and the same training process as any other sporting team, if not more.
