Dedicated cheerleaders turn on the heat at Excel

WASILLA — “Five, six, seven, eight!” says Coach Tasha Straughn, counting in the Excel Extreme Heat team as they practice their routine.

Out of the 16 cheerleaders in the routine, most joined in the last six months, and team members are working hard to get the routine clean and coordinated for their next competition.

Excel gymnastics is still new in the cheerleading world and only has been competing for the last two years. Several cheerleaders have joined from other teams, and they enjoy competing with Excel in addition to their other competitive sports.

Elysia Engst, a seventh-grader at Palmer Junior Middle School, cheers for Excel and her school. Engst has cheered for both teams for almost a year, and she occupies different positions in stunting to learning new cheers and routines.

Cheerleaders have their work cut out for them to make their performances work. It takes many hours of practice, and the dedicated ones practice and condition at home to get better.

Deanna McNutt, a seventh-grader at PJMS and a team member since May, comes to team practices and works for two hours every night on her technique. But the extra practice pays off because McNutt can now perform a round off, double back handspring, a difficult skill that usually takes years to achieve.

McNutt enjoys tumbling and says it’s probably her favorite part of cheer.

“I can just flop around everywhere, and it makes me feel special that I can do things other people can’t.” Engst added, “I really like learning dances because I like dancing.”

While every cheerleader has a favorite part of the routine, there are also the parts they consider the most difficult.

Most cheerleaders agree that the most difficult part of cheer is the stunting. Stunting is the section in the routine where cheerleaders lift other girls and have them perform in the air. Every cheerleader works during that section regardless of her position.

Flyers must concentrate on keeping their bodies tight and fight the urge to try to balance themselves, bases use all their strength to get the flyer up and keep the flyer up, front-spots help hold up the flyer and stabilize the bases, and the back-spots help hold up the flyers and direct the group as a whole.

Dominique Hind, a Colony High School sophomore and one of two cheer captains for the team, agrees that stunting is the most challenging aspect of cheer. “It’s the scariest part, knowing you can drop a girl, and she may be seriously injured.” But the stunt groups all work hard to ensure that they keep their flyers safe, sometimes at the expense of staying on their feet.

But flyers don’t just stand in the air; they have a different style of work to do. Flyers spend extra time on their flexibility so they can hit poses like “scorpion” and “scale.” These are stunts that require balance and strength as well as flexibility, as the flyer must stand on one foot while performing the stunts. Then there are the pyramids, where flyers work with each other to create more advanced stunts such as fallbacks and back tucks.

Flying requires a lot of dedication, and it is probably the scariest part of stunting as these team members must trust other cheerleaders to catch them when they fall. McNutt says her most difficult stunt is “libs” “because you’re standing on one foot, and if you drop your hips or lose your core, then you fall.”

Flyers don’t just spend all their time in the air though.

Engst, who was originally just a flyer, built her strength and skills up to the point where she can now perform any position in a stunt group, which makes her a valuable asset to the team.

Engst said, “I’m normally a back-spot now. I’ve basically done everything; I’ve flown and based and fronted.”

Engst still flies as needed and shuffles to whatever groups need her most. Sometimes, Engst must change her jobs for different stunt groups in the same routine.

It isn’t just the cheerleaders who work hard; the coach puts in just as much work to make the team better. Coach Tasha Straughn, a graduate from Colony High School, spends hours on top of practice times working to help the team. Straughn said, “If you don’t give your team extra attention, how will they ever become better? I work on choreography, skills, stunting, and perfecting my team as a whole. I always want to learn more or something new to help make my team shine a little more every day.”

Competing against other teams is what all teams work toward, and Extreme Heat is no exception. The goal of the entire team is to beat one team they’ve been competing against in every competition, Eagle River City Cheer. Conditioning during practice and cleaning their routine nonstop shows their determination to achieve first place, and team members believe that they will someday achieve that goal. Every day, their routine gets cleaner, and they become stronger as a team.

As cheerleaders think about competitions, some have mixed feelings, but as a whole they look forward to the opportunity to show their skills. Hind said, “I just get really nervous.” McNutt agrees, and adds, “It gives me butterflies when I see all the people, but then I do it.”

Straughn said she loves the competitions because she’s able to see how much her team has improved since last competition.

“Competition isn’t about winning; it’s about showing the incredible skills that every cheerleader has,” she said.

The competitions are also a chance to cheer on teammates as they compete with their school teams. Scholastic and all-star don’t compete against each other, so the competitions give cheerleaders opportunities to show off their skills to their all-star teammates as well.

Most cheerleaders joined Extreme Heat through word of mouth, as McNutt and Engst did.

“My friends asked me to try out at Excel, and I liked it. I thought about other cheer teams and thought they wouldn’t be as good,” McNutt said.

“I had just quit gymnastics, and I’d tried the school team and really liked it, so I tried Excel,” Engst said.

Hind chose Excel for other reasons. Hind had been taking classes at Excel for a while when she heard that they were starting a cheer team.

“I had been tumbling here, and it’s like a family here, and a lot of other gyms don’t feel like that,” she said.

In fact, the togetherness is Hind’s favorite part of being on the cheer team.

“My favorite part is definitely hanging out at practice, having fun, and spending time with the team,” Hind said.

McNutt, Engst, Hind and other cheerleaders who have stayed with a team will say that having good camaraderie is an essential part of the team.

The Excel cheerleaders support each other (often literally) and love watching teammates achieve new skills. When a stunt group hits a stunt they’ve been working towards, or a cheerleader gets a new tumbling pass, the rest of the team claps and congratulates them.

The sense of family on a cheer team is important because if the cheerleaders can’t get along or don’t understand each other, then the team won’t work no matter how long they spend practicing. The team is working on improving for the next competition, and they are making sure to have fun together along the way.

Rhiannon Matthews is a senior at Mat-Su Central School.