Competition Cheerleading

[tcukris10]

Sounds like you guys will be pretty busy! Good luck!

[aims]

buttercup said:

Sparkman has a beautiful kick-double basket and also a pretty around the world during their cheer. They open with squad standing tuck tucks. Their routine is pretty difficult and if they can hit it I think they will be ok!

What do these look like? I haven't watched much competitive cheerleading.

Are they allowed to do the complicated moves like they do in movies...like "Bring It On" ?

[Deleted]

Sparkman 2006

I am trying to post a link and I suck at it, but we'll see if it works.
This is of them the year my daughter was in 8th grade. It shows what sorts of stunts, tumbling and baskets they are allowed. In Bring it On, there are some baskets that would be illegal in High School nationals, and also double-full twisting layouts. High School (and now college) are only allowed to do single twisting layouts.

[tcukris10]

Yeah, most of what you see in Bring It On would only be allowed in college. Even the college rules have gotten more strict in the past few years.

[Deleted]

Well, off to UCA High School Nationals in Orlando tomorrow. Wish us luck!!!

[tcukris10]

How did the competition go?

What were some of the trends you saw?

[Deleted]

Hey! The competition went great. We won number nine, five in a row. The only divisions I really saw "all" of were small and large coed and jv. All of the all-girl stuff was on Sunday and we were already done by then.
I saw some really great ending stunt sequences. Greenup County Super Varsity (who IMO should have won) have an awesome ending sequence. It just seemed to go on forever.
I started to finally see some really good coed stunting which was nice. I think one of the reasons Sparkman does so well is because they do so much partner stunting. A LOT of the coed squads "cheat" and have a spotter hiding behind the guy so they are double basing. But that was better this year. Overall, routines seemed to pick up speed this year too. I was nervous. We also saw a lot of 360 ups, and I think basically the all-girl squads especially feel they cannot win without them anymore.
Sparkman opened with standing tuck-tucks and my daughter said a lot of squads came up to them saying they had never seen that before. So that was cool.

Every single routine (or most of each routine) is up at varsity.com on varsity wired. Which is a neat feature they have now. They had it last year but only featured a few squads. This year everyone is up, even if they didn't make finals.

thanks so much for asking! It was great! I will post a link but as I said before I am horrible at it so I will have to mess around with the editing a good bit!


Here

[tcukris10]

Sparkman looked really good. I haven't seen the tuck tucks before. That was great. Tell the flyers in the baskets to point their toes! Their baskets are really high though. Also, tell them to be sure to start and land with their feet together in jumps and standing back handsprings. Overall, they were solid.

Greenup looked good, too. Their ending stunt sequence was solid and innovative. They had some timing problems in their cross tumbing. They also had flexed feet in the their baskets! (It's a peeve of mine. I used to do ballet, as well, so pointing is a must.)

I liked Archbishop Shaw's opening sequence.

Atascocita is kind of near me. Their pike arch baskets didn't have much arch. They also had a wobble in the middle.

Humble is near me, too. Flexed feet abound. They had one funky looking full in their cross tumbling.

Barren County had some itty bitty girls. Their pike jumps near the end looked pretty bad. They should have done a toe touch instead. It is hard to make pikes look good on that many people.

I liked Bowie at first. They had some cool stunt sequences and their tumbing was together. I didn't like their cheer and after the cheer they kind of lost steam.

Brother Martin with a stading full!

That flyer that won partner stunting is good. She needs a much better partner though.

I've got to quit watching these videos. I'll be here all day.

I was always a NCA person in high school and college. The college team I coached was UCA, but we didn't compete since we had no budget.

[Deleted]

I know. I could watch them all day too! I saw another team besides Brother Martin with a standing full but I cannot remember who it was. They ran together for me after hours of sitting there! There were scouts from Alabama, Tennessee and the coach of UK (Jomo?) sitting behind me. They all talked to our littlest flyer and also Jomo talked to one of our guys afterwards. That was pretty exciting for them.
There is quite a ruckus around here about the whole Bob Jones/Greenup debacle. We support Bob Jones, and they in turn support us because we are all from the same county and our kids cheer at the same all-star gym. But most of us think Greenup should have won it. I think there was a 23 point differential between the two of them.
Oh well, UCA is over for now. Off to Cheersport Nationals in Atlanta tomorrow! Lord, am I tired!

[marywebgirl]

So what do you guys think of Dunbar? I watched the reality show that followed them a couple years ago, and some posters on TWoP said their routines are boring and not particularly difficult. But they do them cleanly and have a great reputation, so they win every year. I'm also a little suspicious because two girls from that squad have gone on to UK's blue squad but didn't make it through their freshman seasons, which makes me wonder if they're lacking fundamentals or work ethic or something.