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Champion Cheer Academy teams win big at national competition

May 20, 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

It has temporarily become a whole different way of competing for cheerleading teams at Orangeville’s Champion Cheer Academy, however the squads stepped up to compete virtually at the Canadian Cheer Virtual Nationals and garnered some medals.

Due to current restrictions, the cheerleading teams had to perform without having actual contact with each other.

Normally they do all sorts of tight moves like building a pyramid, but with the no-contact rule in place, they adapted to performing new routines.

The cheerleaders practice in the gym facility located at the Orangeville mall.

“It’s competitive cheerleading – they have a full routine that’s usually about two and a-half minutes long,” explained coach Krista Barclay. “This year the routines have really changed because of COVID and we’re not allowed to touch each other and there’s usually a lot of lifting in cheers. We got pretty creative. We were happy that we could at least be in the gym and exercising and training.”

The Academy attended a national competition recently and did very well in the final standings.

“This a competition we attend every year, the Canadian Cheer Nationals,” coach Krista said. “Obviously we can’t have a meet this year so they made it virtual for us. In March when we first opened, we had the team come in wearing their uniforms and we filmed their routines. We submitted them to the competition. On the day of the competition, they had judged all the routines ahead of time, then played all the routines virtually and gave out the awards. We have a team of seven and we have a team of up to 23 kids. We took our teams and split them into groups of ten, because of being in the red zone and only allowing ten kids in the gym at one time. The competition was really flexible with us.”

As rules across the country were different in regards to social distancing, the Cheer Academy had to compete with teams that were allowed contact, so they really had to make up for that lack of contact by putting on an extraordinary performance – and that impressed the judges.

The Cheer Academy had seven teams entered into competition.

“We had three first place finishes, a second place, a third place, and a fifth place,” coach Krista said. “The divisions were pretty deep. It ranged from five to ten teams in each division, so we were really happy with the results.”

While the virtual competition was a good experience, the team is looking forward to getting back into competition and attending meets where the live audience and cheering provides some energy to the entire experience. 

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