It’s been a big year for the University of Saskatchewan’s Cheerleading team. After competing at the Power Cheerleading Athletics national championships in Brampton, On. in November 2014 the team landed first place and brought home gold.

This year the team adopted some new changes that have undoubtedly paid off and have been working hard to build their routines, skills and team spirit. Shanda Leftley, one of the three coaches, is enthusiastic about the win.

“Being able to win and show the rest of the country that we do have a good cheerleading program here was awesome,” said Leftley.

Leftley was on the team from 2007 to 2012. She went into coaching the following season and has been one of the head coaches since, along with Nicole Wegner and Gordon Derry for this season.

“Because I’ve been a part of the team for the last eight years I feel like I’ve been waiting for this for so long — and the other coaches who are also alumni have been involved for longer than I have,” said Leftley. “It’s amazing to see that our hard work as coaches and the team’s hard work was able to produce a winning routine.”

The team has been attending this competition for the past 15 years, so to bring home the championship was an incredible feat. The 26 member team — 22 females, four males — beat the defending champions, the University of Regina, with their final stunt routine.

To prepare for the competition, practices are quite intense with two-and-a-half-hour sessions twice a week, plus morning workouts. New this year, however, was a different tryout process for the team. Usually tryouts run in both the spring and fall, with new fall members needing to be taught everything that those who started in the spring already learned.

This year was different — only spring tryouts were held and then those members were kept all the way through in effort to make the team stronger. Leftley explains that they took an abundance of recruits in the spring, to have enough members to fill all of the available spots.

“Because of this, we were able to better prepare and complete our routine earlier and it gave them a lot more time to practice and build confidence in all of their skills,” said Leftley. “When people join in the fall [and] then we have to teach them everything that people have already been working on over the summer… it’s a little bit of a disconnect.”

Team captain Caitlyn Charteris — a third-year kinesiology student who has been on the team for the past three years — would agree.

“It was nice because we didn’t have to start from zero again,” said Charteris. “We just continued with our summer athletes and everyone was ready to go.”

No doubt this allowed the team to better prepare their routines for the competition, but by sticking with the same members it also allowed for the team to become closer.

“Our team is always really close because you’re kind of putting each other’s lives in your hands, so it’s always a big family connection,” said Charteris. “Definitely being together all summer though — and we have team bonding throughout the summer — helps us be one big family.”

As captain, Charteris knows that throughout practice and competition, she needs to keep the team’s spirits high.

“You have to stay positive and uplift the team. Two-and-a-half-hour practices can get really long if things aren’t working and then everyone gets down on themselves,” said Charteris.

The responsibilities of being team captain include running warm-ups, keeping the team motivated and focused and acting as a mediator between the athletes and coaches.

The moves performed can be quite demanding, especially combined with the pressure of the competition. The team handled the pressure very well though, likely due to the training methods the coaches adopted.

“We warmed up like we were in competition and then I would time it, and give them a 10-minute break like they would have at the competition, and then we would run our skills full out. The fact that they had a lot of practice with that process was able to calm their nerves and make them more ready for the situation,” said Leftley.

In addition to drilling routines, the team does a lot of fundraising on the side. Every member has to pay their own way to the competitions, so fundraising is no small feat. Events like pub crawls, food sales and working at various functions or summer events help the team raise the money they need. With fundraisers often at a biweekly rate and involving quite a lot of work, the members show true dedication.

“It’s constant,” Leftly said of the fundraisers.

Although the win is an amazing feat, it hasn’t always been the easiest for the U of S Cheerleading team.

In 2011, the team was stripped of its U of S Huskie status. Formerly the Huskie Cheerleading team, they were no long able to call themselves Huskies, perform at sporting events or use the Huskie logo. The decision was part of a restructuring move at the U of S that decided only Canadian Interuniversity Sports teams would be able to use the Huskie name.

This meant major changes for the team — beyond changing their name. They had to hand in their uniforms, get new ones, no longer perform stunts at sports games and had to apply for University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union club status. Leftley was still a team member when the decision was made.

“The year that all happened I was on my final year on the team. That season was very tough for us because we had to purchase all new gear and uniforms. Also we had to rebuild the confidence of our team, because everything that we had identified with had been taken away,” said Leftley. “It was definitely a very frustrating transition.”

Since then, the team has had no problem getting club status through the USSU, but because they’re not at sporting events, many people don’t realize the team is still around.

“We love that we can still identify with the University of Saskatchewan. It’s really important to us and to our athletes that we can represent our school in this event. But a lot of people don’t realize that we still exist,” said Leftley.

Hopefully the recent win will bring some more recognition to the cheer team and on the bright side, the shift has allowed the cheer team to focus more on their routines and tightening their competition game — a change that is clearly paying off.

“Because we don’t do games, there are some skills that we don’t train anymore. We don’t train game-day stunts, which is actually why we’ve gotten to be a stronger team,” said Leftley. “We’ve been able to spend more time on the competitive aspect of our sport.”

Although practicing to compete can be challenging, Charteris said it’s been a learning curve for her to step into the role of captain, but rewarding nonetheless.

“I’ve learned a lot of organization skills for sure. It’s hard because there’s 26 athletes, so there’s a lot of people to look after, but it’s really helped me to build a better relationship with all of them,” said Charteris.

While strong relationships and trust are important when performing risky stunts, when it comes to competing, confidence becomes the most important thing to have.

“Confidence is key. They need to believe and know that they can do all of their skills without falling,” said Leftley. “They probably did all of their skills more times than they would be able to keep track of because the more times they do it, the more consistent it is.”

The team is hoping this season’s success will carry into the new year. They participated at the Bedford Road Invitational Tournament on Jan. 9–11 and have one more competition coming up at the end of January before the season wraps up. This season has definitely been a successful one — bringing home the championship is a major victory and certainly shows that practice makes perfect.

“This has validated all of our hard work and shows that it all paid off in the long run — all of our morning practices and long hours,” said Charteris. “It’s nice to show everyone that it’s worth it.”

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Naomi Zurevinski / Opinions Editor

Photos:

Top: Dayne Peterson

Middle and Bottom: Jim Crawford