Did I ever think I'd raise a cheerleader? No! However, I have always supported anything Kaeli has wanted to try. I wanted to try cheerleading, fell in love with it, and I have now come to love and embrace the sport. There is so much more to competition cheer than I ever knew. I imagined "rah, rah, go team," but in reality, that is only a tiny portion of it. Honetly, I wish there was another name for it because it is equal parts dance, gymnastics, and cheerleading. These girls work extremely hard, are very athletic, have to keep their grades high, and need to serve at least 30 hours of community service.
You can follow the team on Facebook at White Bear Lake High School Cheerleading
For my first cheer update, I thought I'd do a little review.
In middle school, Kaeli's team came in 2nd in 6th grade, 2nd in 7th grade, and were state champions in 8th grade.
The high school team, which Kaeli is now part of also goes to nationals. In the past, they have gone to a sort of minor league nationals in Kentucky where they won several years in a row. Last year, the high school team received an invitation from the big league national competition in Disney World. High School always competes in two different competitons at both state and nationals. One is the regular competition which is the dance/gymnastics/cheer combo, and one is the Game Day Competition, which is what you would see at a football game. Last year in the regular competition, the high school team took 2nd at state, but failed to get out of the preliminaries at nationals because they couldn't get their pyramid connected. In Game Day they did much better. The high school has been the state champion for the past 6 years. They took 2nd at nationals in Disney. Not too shabby for their first year in the big leagues!
A few terms you will hear often:
Flyer: person off the ground being held or thrown by bases. Kaeli is a flyer this year.
Base: person holding or throwing the flyer. Kaeli has been a base her first 3 years.
Pyramid: A pyramid is the most important element of the routine. All the flyers MUST connect.
A pyramid looks something like this:
Not this:
So you can get a feel for the two different competitions, here are the links to the national competition from last season. The routines will be different this season, but many of the same girls will be returning. If you have 5 minutes, give the videos a watch to learn where Kaeli's passion is. Sorry for the links, Blogger wouldn't let me embed the videos.
This is the link to the regular competition prelims from nationals at Disney World:
This is the link to the Game Day competition where they came in 2nd at nationals:
