Assignment 4

To drift away from my normal topic of cheerleading, an issue I also care about and feel strongly about it gun control. Gun control is a major issue, especially here in Philadelphia where the gun crime rate is so high. In an article from msnbc.com titled, "Philadelphia Murder Rate: 1 per day" by the associated press, they explain how bad crime is getting in our city. "Philadelphia has seen more than one killing a day this year, totaling 127 as of Monday afternoon. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles — whose populations are much larger than Philadelphia's 1.5 million residents — have had fewer homicides this year." This makes me wonder why our city is so violent? With less people, why is our homicide rates higher? I think this is partially because of our loose gun control policies. "Most of Philadelphia's killings are by gunfire, most involve young black men and most are the result of arguments". Arguments shouldn't end in murder. It didn't in the past, and it shouldn't in the present. A friend of mine who is from Korea was telling me about how their gun control laws are different. He said in Korea, no one is allowed to have guns. Only the police officers have guns. This doesn't mean they don't have crime. They still have crimes such as theft and vandalism, and I'm sure there are still fights, but when there are no guns there is less murder. If it wasn't so easy for people to get ahold of guns here, there wouldn't be as many people dead at the end of the day. I know stating it like that is rough to hear, but that's what it is in Philly. It's rough. And this issue needs to be addressed and gun laws should become tighter.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18278063/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

Assignment 3

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/us/15iht-letter.html?_r=1&ref=cheerleaders

In this article, the author Richard Bernstein discusses if cheerleading is a sport or not. "At first blush, it wouldn’t seem to qualify, though, to be sure, it involves physical skills, training and coaches, and there are regular cheerleading competitions around the country." This is true! It is very physical, you need coaches, you train almost all year around for national competitions. The only thing from stopping it from becoming a competitive sport is universities, such as Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, is that NCAA doesn't recognize it as a sport. Well what does NCAA look for in a sport. Athletisim? Physical strength? Competitive drive? Cheerleading has all of those things, maybe even more so then other recognized NCAA sports. "Ms. Silva said, “The intent of such groups is to lead crowds in cheers at sporting events, which makes them undeniably part of the entertainment” — even if there’s athletic skill involved." This is insulting to myself as a cheerleader because I know how hard it is...also how painful it is. We are there for entertainment for sports games, but that's not what COMPETITIVE cheerleading entails. We work just as hard, even harder, then a lot of sports these days. For example I have practice Decemeber 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23 over christmas break. I get to go home for 3 days!!! Then I'm back at practice the 27th. Is that not hard work?? My thumb is strained, my wrist hurts, I wear a back brace, and I have bruises all over. Cheerleading is painful. So as to whether it is a sport or not, I know it is, my team and other teams all around the nation do as well, and that is all that matters. And until NCAA recognizes our work, we will continue to fight this battle until we get the credit we deserve.

Assignment 2

There are tons of cheerleading sites out there, but there are two in particular that are awesome sites for chearleaders to go to. These sites are varsity.com and americancheerleader.com. Varsity is a company that many teams use to get uniforms, go to camps, and go to competitions. On their website they offer information about camps, uniform ordering, and videos of teams competing. They also have links to applications for team USA, and a section for helping such as "How to improve your jumps". This site is informational and helpful to go to. The other site americancheerleader.com is the website for the magazine American Cheerleader. This site contains blogs, articles, contests, videos, and galleries. Like Varsity.com, this is is informational and fun to go to. This one is more personal then varsity because varsity is a company so they are more professional, but together they are two sites that are helpful, educational, and fun.

Memories

I went back to watch my highschool team practice last Monday. It brought back some old good and bad memories. The coaches are exactly the same, maybe even more mean? Or maybe that is just because I get to hear what they talk about because I'm no longer on the team. They look good though. They are working hard trying to reach their goals. It was weird because the girls that were on the team as freshman when I was a senior are now seniors. Most of them don't even know me. I think they will do really well this year though. They open with squad standing tucks and have a really good partner stunt and pyramids. I miss being on that team. My senior year was the best year. We did so well. I was so proud to be a Royal. We got 4th in the nation at nationals (best Upper Darby had done ever) and we won Central Leagues which hadn't been done in a while. Check out my team from 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOIH0axwyGA

Unfortune..

As it turns out, our old video wasn't good enough to qualify us for nationals thing year, which was a shock to a lot of people. But there was an injury and there was nothing we could do about it. I would be lying if I was to tell you I was really upset about it. In some way I'm relieved because I am already under a lot of stress and I don't need any more. Our injured teammate feels really bad though because she thinks it's her fault. It is no ones fault. It's not like she got hurt on purpose. We are thinking about going to NCA instead and hopefully we could make it there, but that depends on funding and other stuff. For now I will focus on the team routine and hopefully we can do well. On a good note, Saturday we are going to the cheer gym I work at to receive tumbling instruction. I'm really excited because my boss is really good at what he does and I think he could help us achieve our goals, including full team standing tucks. I'll update you next week.

ugh...

My back spot got hurt this week. We were doing a waterfall out to the front and our top girl bailed in the middle and landed right on her right shoulder. It separated. So she hasn't been practicing this week but we really need the practice. We didn't have to tape because of it but we have to send in our old tape to try to qualify for all girl partner stunt nationals. I think the tape is good enough to qualify, but if it's not I will be disappointed....I think. It's so stressful, I don't even know if I would be that sad if we didn't do it. We'll see how this turns out. I do hope she gets better though she's a great asset to our team.

It's a start!

A lot of things started this week. First of all, we FINALLY started our routine and I'm really liking it. Second, I landed my standing tuck multiple times yesterday! I am so proud of myself, now I just have to keep it up. And third, the university's athletic department named us the most dangerous team on campus (aside from football of course). Although I am happy people are recognizing us as a sport, including the training staff who sees a lot of our injuries happen, we are not restricted more then ever. Some of the girls on our team are ACA certified, which is basically a liscense to supervise cheerleading activities. But, the athletic dept. doesn't understand that an we are no longer allowed to do any stunts without a coach there. This puts us in a hard situation because in order to practice as much as we need to, we need to do it on our own. We are trying to work it out so we can, because we need to work hard before nationals. But I am glad people are realizing how tough this competitive SPORT is. It's a start!

struggling...

Now is the time to buckle down. We are struggling to come up with money to go to nationals. We need about 18,000 to cover airfare, hotel, and everything else. We need to fundraise 8,000 of that and our coaches got the rest with the school. So far we haven't raised a lot. We are tailgating the sports games and collecting money and in return we show them a cool stunt. It works pretty well. On Tuesday we have a choreographer coming in to help us with a routine all week. Hopefully we will have the whole routine down by next weekend. We recently got two layout basket tosses and one full basket toss. We are hoping the lay outs will be fulls by next week. My top girl is too scared to do it but I hope she changes her mind. I'm at the point where I'm almost fed up with my team but after we get a routine down it should be better. I hope...

here we go...

Here we go again. It's October! Time to start working my butt off at practice. This weekend is my only weekend off until after Nationals in January. I'm going to have practice Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Saturday and Sunday, as well as attending football games and appearances. So busy! Other than that, I just found out from my coach Emily that soon NCAA will be declaring cheerleading as a sport. There have been studies done and a lot of thinking on their part but they are finally ready to say it's so. Many people don't believe how hard competitive cheerleading is. Not doing cheer, competitive cheerleading. I don't think it's going to happen while I'm here at Temple, which sucks, but at least it's being done. Since we are not a "sport" right now in Temple's eyes, we don't get any benefits like the other sports teams even though we work as hard, maybe even harder! Other then cheering football and basketball, we go to weight training twice a week, on top of practicing for nationals five times a week. And on top of that we have to do so many appearances to promote the football and basketball teams. It is so time consuming, I'm becoming so stressed. But it will all be worth it in the end.

For more info...

Because I'm in the middle of learning a routine for nationals (which is in January), and practicing for it all the time I will probably talk about it more and more. To help you understand it a little better, I will post a link at the bottom to a site that you can watch videos on. These videos are from last years nationals. You can watch teams compete and see how challenging it is to get through a routine without falling or messing up because it really is a team sport. If one person messes up a whole group messes up. Everyone plays a major part. For education purposes this site is more then worthy. I use it myself if I want new ideas on stunts, or to see what is popular in routines at the moment. If I want to see how a team performs a stunt I can watch them and try to figure out how we can execute it as well. Some good teams to watch are Slippery Rock, Louisville, San Diego, Hawaii Pacific, and basically any team from the south is good.

http://varsitywired.com/
When you go here you want to click competitions and then videos. Scroll down and go to UCA/UDA. This is the competition we go to.

You will never know...

So I named this blog "not just spirit" because I will be blogging about cheerleading, and most people out there think of it as doing froo froo little cheers at games. For those of you who have never been to a competitive cheerleading event, it is not just doing cheers. We do flips and throw girls high in the air and catch them...it's quite dangerous. There are so many injuries in cheerleading these days. In my almost 3 years at temple I've severly sprained my ankle twice, and sprained my lower back and was sitting out for 3 months. Still sometimes hurts after over a year. In fact, I don't even like cheering for the sports team all that much. I'm all about competition. Here at Temple University, we do cheer basketball and football games, but most of the time we are practicing for nationals. This week we started learning things that we will be performing and taping to send into UCA to try to get a bid for nationals. We really need that bid because Temple Athletics gives us no help in expenses to travel to Florida to Nationals. That's a whole other story. In the tape we send we need to film us doing standing back tucks, running tumbling, and then six different kinds of stunts with different dismounts for each. We also need to show some of our 2 high pyramids like 2-2-1's and what not. So far, so good. We'll see what next week brings.