My society: Cheerleading
My society: Cheerleading
This blog is going to explore one of our amazing societies at Buckinghamshire New University. The BNU Swans, our cheer squad!
First off, our teams:
We have our main cheer team, BNU Swans Supremacy, which trains throughout the year to compete with a 2 minute 30 seconds routine that includes tumbling, stunts, dance and jumps. Our pom team, Swans Serenity, focuses on high energy routines with sharp movements all whilst using pompoms. Finally, our newest team, BNU Swans Majesty, is our hip hop style team.
In addition to our teams, we also hold socials throughout the year that anyone can join, so even if you’re not on one of the teams, you can still be a social swan. These socials are really enjoyable and a great way to get to know teammates outside of training and/or make new friends.
In the past we’ve had socials making cheer bows, going out to eat and participating in the club takeover events at The Venue (our Students’ Union night club).
I personally am a member of our main cheer team, so I'm going to take you through the journey of our 22/23 season. Starting off with the first few weeks of training:
We train twice a week and as soon as we started training we had to work out who would be our flyers, our bases, backspots and fronts for our stunts and the pyramid. This was something that had to be changed around throughout quite a few months to work out the best combinations for consistently hitting the stunts. During this time our coaches started to teach us the routine for dance, the jump sequences and tumbling passes.
As we started to get the hang of all the aspects of our routine we focused on improving our technique and stamina through conditioning sessions. We also started to put all the individual parts together, working on smooth transitions from one section to the other.
An important day for all our cheerleaders is the day our uniforms and cheer bows arrive. We love our uniforms and they truly complete our routine. The first time we all practiced in uniforms everyone brought so much more energy to the routine!
The final week before competition our practices were included doing as many full outs as possible, running the routine to ensure we could polish it all and correct any issues. On these final sessions everyone’s drive to do well is shown and we all help everyone else improve.
On our competition day we took the minibus up to Milton Keynes for the Future Cheer Adventure in Atlantis comp. Once we got to the arena, we checked in, got changed and were able to watch some other teams perform before going backstage to do our final practices and warmup. Backstage everyone is so focused and filled with adrenaline. They called our teams name out and we all ran on to the mat waving at the judges ready to start our routine. The music started and we put everything we had into that performance. It was such a thrilling experience with the crowd cheering us along that even though we left the mat breathless we all wanted to do it all over again.
Not that long after it was time for the results to be announced and we were so happy to win our division, at the top of the page is a picture of some of our team with our trophy and banner!
Now we are preparing for our final performance at the university, which is our showcase. We’re all looking forward to it and also looking forward to what next year’s season brings and the new talent that joins.
