Sports
Guts, Sweat and Cheers
Forget what you know about cheerleading. At University Cheer Force in Elk Grove, the jumps are higher, the falls are harder and cheering suddenly seems like a sport.
At University Cheer Force in Elk Grove, there are several things you won’t find.
For starters, there are no pom-poms in the gym. No giant megaphones for school rallies.
Instead, there’s a springy blue floor about the size of a basketball court—perfect for cartwheels, backflips and launching tiny bodies through the air like Styrofoam.
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Sounds more like gymnastics than cheerleading, right?
It’s definitely not your average pep squad. Instead, University Cheer Force (UCF) trains participants for competitive cheerleading events more likely to appear on ESPN than a local football field.
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Starting at age four, UCF cheerleaders learn tumbling skills for acrobatic routines they often perform at national competitions before thousands of spectators. It’s a packed house—the gym currently has 257 girls signed up this year.
And they’re quick to point out that competitive cheerleading is a far cry from what happens on high school sidelines.
“A lot of people don’t think of cheerleading as a sport, but I do,” said Mikko Edwards, 14, who goes to Sheldon High School. “I like to separate competitive cheerleading from high school cheerleading, because a lot of people think (UCF) is ‘2-4-6-8, do your jump and you’re done’ and it’s really not like that.”
West Coast teams on the rise
Last year, Edwards was part of a UCF squad that traveled to Atlanta for the Cheersport Cheerleading and Dance National Championships in March 2011. Five out of six teams from the Elk Grove gym placed fifth or higher in their respective divisions. The venue had multiple stages, which usually meant several teams completing routines at the same time, with thousands of spectators watching.
“That was the biggest competition I’d ever been to in my entire cheer career,” said Jessica Roque, 17, a senior at Franklin High School. “It was a whole new experience, seeing all the teams and going up against teams that were better than us.”
Competitive cheerleading is actually a fairly new phenomenon in California, said UCF coach Jill Norgaard. The sport first became popular in the southern United States, where communities are known for putting more resources into high school and collegiate athletics than the West Coast does.
That means California gyms like UCF have been playing catch-up with Southern cheer squads, but Norgaard thinks her teams proved in Atlanta that they could compete with anyone.
“We’ve grown tremendously and the interest is there,” she said. “We built enough talent to be as good and capable as those southern states.”
Last weekend, the gym sent nine teams to perform at the American Masterpiece event in San Jose, going up against nearly 200 other teams from around Northern California. One of UCF’s most experienced teams, the fifth-level Senior squad, took first place, earning part of a $5,000 purse for the highest-scoring teams.
A physically demanding sport
Participants normally attend practice at least twice a week and then travel to competitions on weekends. Edwards said her life consists of “school, cheer and sleep,” although she didn’t seem to mind that schedule.
“I’m totally content with that,” she said.
Still, there are downsides that come with the pressure. Edwards was limited in practice this week because she’s recovering from a torn ACL in her knee.
Parents of UCF cheerleaders say they have accepted the risks competitive cheer poses for their daughters. (While open to both boys and girls, the gym has only trained female cheerleaders in its 10-year history.)
Jessica Voss-Henderson, who has two daughters at UCF, said she trusts Norgaard and the rest of the coaches.
“They’re professional, the gym is professional, they’re very approachable,” said Voss-Henderson, a former coach and self-professed cheer junkie. "If I have a concern about my kids, everybody knows the coaches."
That support is key, given how physically demanding the sport can be.
"When you go out there competing, you don’t realize how much it works your body,” said Macee Konkel, 16, a student at Franklin. “You come off the mat when you’re done competing and you can’t breathe.”
