St. Mark's cheer squad racking up wins
Posted Mar 12, 2010 By Charelle Evelyn
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Tweet ThisEMC Sports - As the members of the St. Mark's High School cheerleading team will tell you, it takes a lot of work to get to the top.
Before they can even think about competing, squad members have to put in hours of training just so they can execute those point-grabbing lifts in a two-and-a-half minute routine.
The 30-girl team practices twice a week for two-and-a-half hours after school and four times a week before a competition with their coaches Stacey Mahar and Alanna Burke. That doesn't include the time everyone spends at home going over the counts with the music, or the extra four hours per week the tumblers practice at the gymnastics centre, or even the hour and a half of stretching the tops (the girls hoisted in the lifts) have to perform everyday.
"Gone are the pom-pom days," said Shelley Hay, the team's administrator. "They give it all on the floor for two-and-a-half minutes."
But that's what it takes to win. And according to Ms. Hay, the group is hoping to win national competition coming up this spring.
The St. Mark's gymnasium bears evidence of the winning tradition, with banners for the squad dating back to the team's inception in the 1980s. The most recent win took place two years ago. After going through a team-building year with many brand new members, the 2009/10 squad is already making their mark, taking first place in two regional competitions last month.
Not only did they wow the judges at the competition with their routine, but they impressed their coaches with their behaviour as well.
Instead of falling prey to the cattiness of competition, Ms. Hay said they took it upon themselves to cheer everybody else on.
"They're really a good group," she said, her point emphasized as the group burst into cheers and applause for a fellow member who finally executed a nerve-wracking move.
Watching the team at their Feb. 25 practice, outsiders would be hard-pressed to guess that they had just nabbed another first-place win less than a week prior. But with a provincial competition looming, the girls were still in the learning stages of a more difficult routine.
With every run-through, it was easy to see that the routine was solidifying at a fast pace and they would be more than ready by the time they left for Kitchener on March 5.
The difficulty level on the routine will be raised again before they head to nationals in Mississauga at the end of April.
For grade 11 student Leah McGinn, the hard work is worth it. With a background in dance and figure skating, this is Leah's second year on the team. She said she enjoys the variety of activities that cheerleading offers, despite the occasional bumps and bruises.
"You can do everything all in one," she said, adding that forming relationships with the other girls is also a perk.
But the biggest draw is the thrill of the competition.
"It's really overwhelming," Leah said, describing the adrenaline rush from competing under the lights of an arena with a rapt audience. "It happens so fast, you feel like it didn't even happen."
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