Cheerleading
All-Star Cheerleading
All-star, or competitive, cheerleading has recently been becoming more advertised and developed in the past few years. Competitive cheerleading is not thought of as a sport, but in my opinion, I definitely think it is. A group of people do a routine with dancing, stunts,jumps and tumbling in two minutes and 30 seconds on a spring mat. I don't know about you, but that takes a lot of endurance! The routine is preformed infront of a panel of judges that are cheerleading experts. The teams are judged based on the difficulty and execution of their routine.
All-star cheer can have up to 36 members on one team. The difficulty levels range from level 1 to level 6, and level 6 being the most difficult. The levels can be explained like this: Level 1 (3-5 yrs), Level 2 (6-8yrs), Level 3 (9-11yrs), Level 4 (12-14yrs), Level 5 (15-18yrs), and Level 6 (18+ yrs). Although these levels have age ranges, some can move up even if they aren't in that age range. For example, if a 10 year old is really good and has the SKILL level at level 6, then they can join that level. All-star cheer is great for all ages, boys and girls. Some teams are co-ed (boy and girl), while others are only girls (known as All-Girl).
Even high school and college cheer teams compete against other schools. But, all-star is a team that doesn't affiliate with a school, and they are strictly only set out to compete. This means, they do not cheer for a sport or infront of a crowd, and they don't have pom poms. For competitive cheerleading, I am going to explain this type of cheerleading, and involve the two major gyms in my hometown known as Thunder Elite and Oregon Dream Team in Oregon.
Tryouts:
All-star tryouts is what sets the main difference between this and high school. In all-star teams, there is a spot for everyone, and a skill level for everyone, unlike college or high schools teams where there is only a couple spots for certain skill level athletes. Tryouts really are not tryouts, more of an evaluation mainly based on tumbling level. Here is an example of an evaluation that a coach might use for tryouts.
1
Forward/backward rolls, front/back walkovers,
Cartwheels, Roundoffs
Two Leg: elevator
One Leg: Below shoulder level
2
Single Backhandspring
Series backhandsprings
Two Leg: Extension
One Leg: Prep Level
3
Series Backhandsprings
Back/Front tucks (no tumbling is allowed after the flip)
Two leg: Single Twist from Extension
One Leg: Straight Cradle from extended
4
Standing tuck, Standing backhandspring (s) to tuck/layout
Layout, front tuck connected to tumbling
Two leg: Double twist from extension
One Leg: Single twist from extended
5
Jumps to tuck, handsprings to twisting skills
Full and double twists, specialty passes
Double twist from extended one leg stunts, elite transitions
Camp:
All-Star cheerleaders will usually attend and NCA or National Cheerleading Association camp because they are more at that level and they don't require the crowd involvement factor that UCA holds.
Also, All-Star teams usually hold caps during the summer to help cheerleaders in the area that only want to focus on stunting. That is what Thunder Elite does during the summer, and the level 5 athletes are the instructors.
Competition:
Competition to All-Star cheerleaders is the same as games plus assemblies to high school cheerleaders. All-star cheerleaders work every day to practice and perfect the 2 1/2 minute routine to preform infron of the judges. The main focus is to get through the basic comeptitions. The real goal is to get to Worlds.
Worlds is the main cheer competition for all All-Star cheerleaders. Some high school cheerleaders go, but they are in different catergories and divisions than all-stars. Preforming and winning at Worlds shows everyone how hard that gym has worked on perfecting their routine to make it difficult enough and to do it flawlessly. Below are the routines of Oregon Deam Team and Thunder Elite at Worlds in August 2014.
Stunts and Uniforms:
The stunts preformed by all-star cheerleaders can be easily preformed by high school cheerleaders. The only restraint is the fact that sometimes high school cheer isn't allowed to have 36 cheerleaders on one team. The only difference that all-star cheer does with their stunts compared to high school is the transitions (movement from stunt to stunt) and how well the stunts flow together.
Uniforms of all-star cheerleaders are similar to college cheer uniforms. Sometimes the all-star uniforms have jewels on them to make them sparkle under lights, somethimes they have mid-drifs with shorts, other times they have a full body uniform. It all depends on what the gym prefers. The girls on the team will also poof their hair in a pony tail similar to the image above. For Thunder and ODT, they both have mid-drif uniforms.
Click here to view Thunder Elite's website
Click here to view Oregon Dream Team's website.
Here are a couple of interesting videos that I found that members of the gym have created. The Thunder Elite video "Respect My Sport" was done by one of my friends that went to my school.