Cheerleading
Cheerleading has found a growing popularity here in the UK, with the influence of films such as “Bring It On”, and its combined use of dance and gymnastics. Cheerleading’s roots can be found at Princeton University in the 1880s when the crowd chant was used as a way to encourage the school spirit at football games. The first person to actually cheerlead however, was one University of Minnesota student, Johnny Campbell, who stood in front of the crowd and directed them in a chant in 1898.
In 1948, Lawrence "Herkie" Herkimer formed the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA), but things really took off in the early 1970’s when professional American Football teams started to have their own professional cheerleading squads, most notably at that time the Dallas Cowboys.
Here in the UK we have the British Cheerleading Association (BCA: http://www.cheerleading.org.uk) , and on their website they have the latest guidelines and competition rules.
On the 8th March (Easter Sunday) the Queni Dynamos set off for Telford, to go to the Midlands Classic Cheerleading Competition. I filmed my group, the Queni Dynamo Juniors, preparing for the day, with the dress rehearsal where everything went wrong, the last practice where everything went right, and then my friends and I outside the arena doing gymnastics and talking about cheerleading on the actual day where 7 trophies were won by the Queni Dynamos, and a 3rd and 5th by the Quenie Dynamo Juniors.
