Here is the video of my 2002 cheer team's stunt routine at the state championships. This is my favorite video because everything hits so perfectly. We tied with another team for the championship that year but it was a team that we were friends with so it was a big party when we both won (this is an obvious lie but the politcally correct thing to say, everyone wants to win it alone and never have to share a title). You can barely see me at the bottom of the screen but every once and a while you will see my hand go up and at the end you see me jump up and run to the girls. I was a freak at competitions. I usually had to stand in front of the girls behind the judges and they would all watch me for clues telling them what to do better. But at States I had to sit in front of the judges and I didn't do well with sitting, I was way too nervous. By the end of this round I had fallen off my chair and was sobbing because nothing fell and everything was perfect. It's a very stressful sport because at any moment things can go very bad. So here you go:
A big thanks to Chad for being a genius and pulling our routine from the dvd and posting it on youtube for me. Love you sweetie!
posted by Stephanie @ 6:27 AM
10 Comments:
WOW. That was incredible. The most impressive thing was that the group was so in sync throughout, even with so many girls. And you could hear the crowd was totally with you. They were going nuts for parts of it.
Great job! I watched for your arms popping up and out of view. LOL! Then I saw you jump up at the end.
Thank you. It took forever to become that in sync. We practiced 4 days/week for about 9 months.
that was AWESOME. Man - so ... crisp. It seems like all the jumps were exactly the same height, and everywhere where you expect to see people slip slightly out of sync, it was perfect. Insane.
Nice work!
Thanks! It's funny because one of my cheerleaders just gave me a dvd of all the competition performances from that year. There were about 10 competitions and you can tell that at every competition we were getting better but nothing was as tight as the State championship performance. Over the weekend I will post our 2003 State Runner-Up performance even though it still causes me great sadness. I hate losing! :)
I commented to Seppo last night, "The most impressive thing about this is that this was just a bunch of random students, until someone we know, Stephanie, trained them and taught them all this stuff!" I don't mean to discount the individual work and dedication it took to get there, as undoubtedly these girls worked their butts off and it REALLY showed, but it's amazing what you did.
Do you do all the choreography or does it come from the girls too?
I can only assume LOTS of mirrors are involved in training that level of synchronicity. I joked to Seppo when one girl's leg wobbled a teeny bit for a milisecond that you probably gave her a beatdown afterwards. ;)
My only wish is that there was a split screen video of what you were doing crouched down the entire time. I could see your gestures to the girls, but it would be awesome to see the whole thing. Then when you popped out of the bottom, Seppo and I both giggled because it was so clearly such an exuberantly happy moment. It reminded me of Mia Hamm ripping off her top. :D
LOL. The fans used to get a kick out of my actions in front of the girls at the competitions. I was pretty crazy especially since most of the other coaches were older and much more reserved. At that time I was only 21 and I was involved in every detail of my team. I choreographed most of the routine except for the dance part, two of the cheerleaders did that. But I mixed the music, wrote the cheers, wrote the line formations and decided on the stunts.
There are actually two rounds in a competition. The first round is a flat cheer (no stunts) and the second round is the creative round, that's what you see in the video. In the nine months that we practice, the first three months in the summer are dedicated to conditioning and training. Then in the fourth month we begin to work on the routines and then its just perfecting. I was such a harsh coach, that if any stunts fell at practice, the girls would automatically begin doing pushups. I yelled A LOT and threw things. But the girls loved it and even now when I see them, they still talk about how it was best experience of their lives and how having me as a coach taught them to stand up for themselves and be stronger. That's the best part of it, I didn't realize at the time the impact I had on these girls. But now years later, they tell me that my confidence and pushing made them push themselves. I loved every minute of my coaching experience. Even the bad moments which were few and far between.
Oh and about 5 minutes after we finished the routine above, I had to go pick up our penalty sheet from the judges. We had never had a penalty before and I wasn't expecting a problem but when I got to the table the envelope was thick and we had a 40 point deduction which is HUGE! I just about died that day. But I fought the penalties and made the judges review the tapes and they reversed them but it took about 2 hours and I was steaming mad. We had been at the competition since 10am and we didnt find out the results until 1am and I hadn't eaten anything all day. It was very stressful.
Wow, I didn't mean for that to sound so conceited or to take away from the girls. I learned a lot from them, they were a lesson in strength, teamwork and dedication. They were an amazing group of girls to work with and we wouldn't have done as well without any of them. :)
That kind of impact is so rare. You have every right to be proud of that, and you didn't talk about it in a way that took away from the girls. I could tell how proud you are of the girls (and that you, too, remember them fondly) from the way you spoke about them with such enthusiasm.
Man, I hope that just one person will think that I had that kind of impact on them by the time I've lived a long life and look back on my life. And you've already done it. :D
Plus, it was in doing something that was incredibly fun to watch! :D
Interesting to know.
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