Shelby Bradley | Sports Co-Editor
This season, the Buena Vista University (BVU) cheerleading squad experienced a first in their collegiate cheerleading careers. They attended the WOW Factor Sports Competition, which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The BVU cheer and dance squad came home champions of the 2015 All Girls category. Many teams participated in this competition ranging from high schools, all-star teams, and collegiate teams which included Co-Ed teams.
The team learned their routine for competition back in November, which was choreographed with Cheer Innovation out of Des Moines, Iowa. Cheer Innovation has an extensive background with stunting, collegiate cheer and competition cheerleading and was ecstatic to take the BVU Cheerleading program to their first competition.
“The BVU Cheerleading program has come very far in the past couple of years, we are making huge personal gains that will only reflect the program with a positive impact,” head cheerleading coach Whitney Dickinson said.
Senior cheerleader, Natalie Bellairs has also experienced the team grow as a whole since her freshman year. Bellairs stated that the number of members has expanded enabling the team to have more numbers of stunt groups, meaning that they are able to build bigger and more complex stunts.
“We have moved from simply cheering at basketball and football games, to having a competition routine and expanding our stunting skills,” Bellairs said.
In preparation for the competition the BVU cheer squad spent countless hours learning and practicing their choreography. They worked on perfecting stunt sequences as well as the dance and cheer parts. The Beavers’ main preparation for the competition was running through their routine over and over again.
“The counts, music and stunting all have to be exactly on time, or it just doesn’t work,” Bellairs said.
The competition atmosphere Bellairs described as amazing. With so many different schools participating in it there were hundreds of cheerleaders of all ages preforming at different levels.
The BVU cheerleading program is only continuing to grow from here as they now have one year of competition experience under their belt. Many experiences have been taken away from this year that will continue for years to come.
“I see BVU cheerleading becoming an excellent program that is highly competitive. I hope to possibly see a Co-Ed squad in the future, as I know that would only enable the stunting aspect to be even more complex and competitive. I look forward to seeing how it grows in the years to come,” Bellairs said.
