Our Last Partner Stunt?

Looking to the future has made me realise that my cheerleading career could be nearing it’s end. It seems a strange concept to me, especially considering the past manic six months we have just had with intensive training and competing at three different competitions.

This year we have chosen to compete with FC and ICC events. We can no longer participate at other companies as the different organisation’s rules do not correspond with each other, meaning we would have to keep changing our routines. Unfortunately FC do not have another competition in England until their Nationals in July, and ICC have just had their Nationals last weekend and will not be hosting another competition until August.

I will be especially sad to leave my team, and desperately would like to compete with them again. But in July I will be moving back home and Mike, my stunt partner, has just been accepted into the police, so will be moving back home too at the start of summer.

So I wanted to share our last partner stunt routine with you.

I hope you enjoy it.

Mike's newspaper article

While watching Barry's video, I remembered reading about Mike, one of our male cheerleaders when he was on his old team, the Blackpool Scorpions.

"There's been so much going on with Mike's cheerleading career recently (he even receieved the Cheerleaders' Cheerleader award nominated by his own team members for achievements during the last 12 months) the press thought it worthy of a half page spread in the local paper. Mike has done a lot to increase awareness and viability of male cheerleaders in the UK in the last two years and we think the article as well as continuing to heighten this impression, is well derserved on merit. Well done Mike. Click here to view article - you may have to wait a minute for the print to become clear and legible."

The Celtic Men

On the subject of male cheerleaders, I thought I should mention my own squad, seeing as they are pioneering the way for co-ed cheerleading in the UK.

Our first competition this season (with ICC) saw the Celtics take to the floor in the first ‘truly’ co-ed routine seen this side of the pond.

By ‘truly’ co-ed I mean that there were more men on the floor than women, and that all the stunts that were thrown were co-ed ‘partner’ stunts, not ‘group’ stunts. This by no means undermines all the other co-ed squads out there; the UK cheerleading community is currently at a transitional stage in it’s development where we have just begun to tap into the resources which can provide correct and up-to-date co-ed stunt coaching. The video posted below is the highlights from the UCA 2008 Partner Stunt Nationals (these are some of the best in the world!)

In the past few years co-ed cheerleading has really taken off, starting in February 2006 with the very first Co-ed Partner Stunt division (one base and one flier) at a UK competition.

Hosted by Future Cheer, it saw Mike McMahon and I pull out the very first all-British routine and the start of a new excuse, I mean trend for men to show off their masculinity and brawn.

Every time I blink, the standard of co-ed stunting increases and the next big Partner Stunt division is at Future Cheer’s Midland competition in February this year.

Good Luck to our four couples and everyone else who are entering.

Male Cheerleaders

My fellow cheerleader, Tim Stevenson sent me a text the other day (22nd Jan 08) to say that Scott Mills was discussing male cheerleaders on Radio 1, "Scott Mills ripped male cheerleaders and now every cheer team everywhere are ringing in and complaining."

Naturally, I tuned in straight away, but to be honest it wasn’t very positive.

As the week went on, his show on the 23rd heard him speaking to “Pom Pom Pete and find out the reasons why men become cheerleaders(!)” This in all cases is for the girls (the men to women ratio is heavily favoured towards the men!) but once they realise that it is so much harder and physically demanding than they first thought, they soon become addicted to stunting; throwing (and catching) girls in the air.

On the 24th he spoke with a “lucky lad who lives with 9 cheerleaders.”

And today (25th) he had a “team of cheerleaders along to teach Scott their moves while he's in full costume.” For more updates visit http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio1/mills/rss.xml

I have attached the video of Scott’s crash course in cheerleading and it is also on his homepage on the Radio 1 website, along with a very short article. A guy called Ross Graesing left a message on Scott Mills' bebo page saying that he "typed in scott mills tonight to see the mad cheerleader thing and thought why wld anyone degrade themselves like that!"

It is actually worth a watch, seeing as he injures himself doing a forward roll!

They featured the Boswell Cheerleading Squad, a team who had some manly looking guys, it is just a shame they didn't show any stunts, seeing as that is what primarily impresses men in cheerleading.