Category: Cheerleading

UCA College Nationals 2023

I can’t tell you how many years I go to decode the winners of a cheer competition and I can’t find it anywhere. This is not the end all of the results and I’m still looking for the right place to store it, but I also want to start collecting information on cheer teams. Which team finished second place in Small Coed D1 in 2004? How do you find it? History is important, and with all the information we have, I’m surprised we don’t have a better database of this stuff.

Here is my attempt to start putting it together. Here are the results from the 2024 UCA College Nationals.

D1A All Girl Results

  1. Western Kentucky University
  2. The University of Oklahoma
  3. University of Alabama
  4. UAB
  5. University of Mississippi
  6. San Diego State University
  7. Indiana University

D1A Cheer Finals

  1. The University of South Florida
  2. The University of Kentucky
  3. The Ohio State University
  4. The University of Central Florida
  5. The University of Oklahoma
  6. The University of Alabama
  7. Western Kentucky University
  8. The University of Tennessee
  9. The University of Louisiana Lafayette
  10. Liberty University
  11. The University of Toledo

Division 1 Cheer Finals

  1. Morehead State University
  2. University of West Georgia
  3. Pittsburgh State University
  4. University of Delaware

Open Coed Cheer Finals

  1. Iowa Western Community College
  2. Shelton State Community College
  3. Jones College

Small Coed Division 1A Cheer Finals

  1. Florida State University
  2. Bowling Green State University
  3. The University of Minnesota
  4. Purdue University
  5. The University of Memphis
  6. Troy University
  7. Ball State University

Open All Girl Finals

  1. Pearl River Community College
  2. Widener University
  3. Rowan University
  4. Webber International University
  5. The College of New Jersey
  6. University of Pikeville
  7. Wallace State College
  8. Nassau Community

Small Coed Division 1 Finals

  1. Morehead State University
  2. Eastern Kentucky University
  3. Southeastern Louisiana University
  4. Austin Peay State University
  5. Belmont University
  6. Providence College

All Girl Division 1 Cheer Finals

  1. Morehead State University
  2. The University of West Georgia
  3. Sacred Heart University
  4. The University of Delaware
  5. The University of Rhode Island
  6. Towson University
  7. Monmouth University
  8. Villanova University

Open Small Coed Cheer Finals

  1. Wilmington University
  2. Drury University
  3. Northwest Mississippi Community College
  4. University of Southern Indiana
  5. Northwest Missouri State University
  6. Itawamba Community College

Villanova Fight Song

The other day I stumbled across this awesome project by FiveThirtyEight: Our Guide To The Exuberant Nonsense Of College Fight Songs | FiveThirtyEight while googling for fight songs. I was a cheerleader in college and still have my fight song memorized. I went the Villanova, and our Fight Song was called “V for Villanova”. The words were as follows:

“V” for Villanova, “V” for Victory
“B” for Blue and “W” for White

For the Blue and the White we will fight!
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Fight for Villanova, Fight for Victory

For we’re out to win the fray;
Villanova leads the way,
With a capital “V” for Victory.

Vill-a-no-va, V-I-L-L-A-N-O-V-A
“V” for Vic-tor-y, V-I-C-T-O-R-Y
It’s a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye,
and a “V” for a V-I-C-T-O-R-Y

“V” for Villanova, “V” for Victory
“B” for Blue and “W” for White

For the Blue and the White we will fight!
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Fight for Villanova, Fight for Victory

For we’re out to beat the foe
Show the en-e-my we know
how to win with a “V” for Victory.

This isn’t included in the 538 study because it wasn’t part of the schools they selected. Regardless, I’ve decided to post the values for the CSV that they are using:

ColumnValue
schoolVillanova University
conferenceColonial Athletic Association
song_nameV For Villanova
writersLes Irving
yearUnknown
student_writerUnknown
official_songYes
contestNo
bpm145
sec_duration73
fightYes
number_fights12
victoryYes
win_wonYes
victory_win_wonYes
rahNo
nonsenseNo
colorsYes
menNo
opponentsNo
spellingYes
trope_count5
spotify_id3Xe4aLJbQcEAmbyeM5DJbC

A couple of additional notes:

  • BPM is a guess by someone who knows better than me.
  • Information obtained for this was sourced from several places and may not be completely accurate. Information is provided to the best of my abilities.

Jamz Nationals: an experience review

Full Disclosure, I was on the team that got named 2010 Jamz Open Coed Level 6 National Champion. Fun! Go Rebel’s Elite!

That being said, I want to talk about the way the competition is run and why (sorry) I didn’t really enjoy the competition. I enjoyed my experience with my teammates, who are AWESOME! but the competition was lack luster for me. Here are some reasons why:

  1. Lack of consideration for crossovers. Rebel’s brought two level six teams to compete at this competition. The reason is because we had more than enough people to fill one team, so we have two. A coed and an all girl. While it’s great to have two teams, we don’t have enough (yet) to fill two completely separate teams. Not to mention the fact that injuries throughout the season has caused the need for cross overs. For those of you who don’t know what a cross over is, it’s someone who competes on more than one team for the same gym. Usually I frown on this process, but in our case it was absolutely necessary to do it.

    When we competed here, our teams almost piggy backed each other. What this means is that we didn’t get to go through the correct warm up for our second team, because during our time no the first mat, we had people on the competition floor with our other team. I feel like this really put our coed team (which went second) at a disadvantage. This was really not cool.

  2. Long and boring awards. The Jamz staff have some amazing skills. And while the awards were going on, they were showing off, in a good way. There was a ton of tumbling and some very fun stunting. One guy (famous John) even through a couple double tucks and attempted a double punch front. Despite the entertainment, the awards dragged on. I sat through two sessions of awards. They had the same musical act perform. Once they started announcing the awards, the distractions on stage took away from the announcer and while the energy was high, it was unsustainable and over time faded.

  3. Boring back drop. Some companies go all out with their stage presentation. UCA goes crazy. Jamz did a very simple back drop, which was all black just with some traditional lights. While normally I feel that it is a good thing to let the routines stand out, I felt that their approach was too little. I don’t need a ton of flash and smoke (in fact, I hate smoke, it makes the air harder to breath), I do like a little color. The result was a lack of excitement. The whole hall felt overly dark.

Rebels is, at this point, a three time national champion at the competition so I have a hard time believing we won’t return next year, but I’m hoping that Jamz will fix some things before that competition. We’ll see next year.

Handspringman.com

For those of you who have known me for more than, say, five years, you know that one of my original web properties was handspringman.com. Unfortunately, due to issues with the way domain registration works, it slipped out of my control. At the time it was prohibitively expensive to reposes (somewhere in the several hundred dollar range).

Well, good news, it’s coming home. I recently checked it’s availability on GoDaddy and was able to procure it relatively inexpensively. I will do my best to put something up there soon.

CheerGyms.com Open Team Expenses and Review

I thought it would be worthwhile to publish my expenses for my college team last year. This is useful for anyone who is interested in calculating whether or not you can afford to an open cheerleading team. I cheered for CheerGyms.com. They were a good team and I will talk about my pros and cons a bit lower, but first lets look at the expenses.

Expense Cost
Tuition and Competition Fees, including uniform costs $1,209.81
Nationals Hotel Bill $104.00
Gas Costs to travel to practice. Assuming 3 practices a month (to account for holidays and weeks off), cost of 2.50/gallon, and 20 miles/gallon on the car $405.00
Gas for nationals, same figures as above, traveling distance about 404 miles $101.00
Gas for local competitions in Sacramento $80.25
Total $1,900.06

This is just the hard numbers and I’ve gone a little soft on the miles and gas price. The point, however, is still relatively strong: I spent nearly $2,000.00 no an open team last year. I had a good time, but that is really expensive, so I’ve decided not to cheer again next year while I try to get my finances in order.

I’d also like to list some of the pros and cons of my experience at CheerGyms.com so that others can decide if it is the correct place for them:

Pros

  • Great History – CheerGyms.com has been around for many years and is a staple in the local cheerleading community. Even those programs that are run by other coaches normally have some connection back to CheerGyms.
  • Great Administrators – My experience with the administrators of the program was great. Morton and Danny are the co-owners of the gym and all my experiences with them were very positive. They are strong leaders and GREAT coaches
  • Great Facility – CheerGyms have two gyms, one in San Jose and one in Concord. They are both relatively large facilities as cheerleading space in the bay area goes. Their gym in Concord is the biggest gym I’ve been to within comfortable driving distance. Both gyms have full cheerleading floors with relatively high ceilings. Both gyms have at least one tumble track and a crash mat.
  • Good Teammates – Throughout the year we had our disagreements, but in general the team was full of good people. I wasn’t best friends with everyone, but I felt that everyone cared about the program, and I was very excited to be a part of it.

Cons

  • Lack of Skill Practice – This is part of the way that CheerGyms work, but they don’t get a chance to factor in skill growth into practice. We only met for about 2 hours a week, so this is acceptable, but it is really something I enjoy doing.
  • Lack of Consistent Leadership at Practice – Throughout the year, we shifted coaches. It was not entirely avoidable as our head coach had his hip replaced, but still it would have been good to have a strong coaching experience. I do not feel I had one. I also think that this doesn’t persist to other teams at the gym, I think it is unique to the college team.
  • No Coed Nature – this team is very small coed, despite the fact that we had 7 to 9 guys on the team. Guys did not do any direct toss stunts. While this is the nature of the business of most teams in the area, it was in stark contrast to what I was looking for.
  • Lack of Team Togetherness – I never really felt part of the team. There did not appear to be too much team bonding and it made for a very disjoint feeling. This is something I’ve had on my previous All Star teams and I missed it sorely. Again, I think this is unique to the College team due to the distances that people live from the gym, and how often practices are.
  • Distance – This one isn’t really the gyms fault, but mine for joining the gym. It was way too far for me. Nearly an hour every sunday morning each way. This was just too much.

All of that measured, I’m glad I had an opportunity to be a part of that program. I wish them all the best, but for me it just doesn’t work.

Crazy Cheer Parents

I was reading this cheerleading blog today when I came up to a quote that I have to pass on. The article is part of One Two Down Up, a blog for a cheerleading coach who doesn’t make their identity easily known. (I could probably find it, but I’m too lazy)

One of the articles is about Cheer Parents,

The Ups and Downs of a Cheerleading Coach: Those Crazy CHEER PARENTS.

This Article is particularly interesting to me because of one quote:

As a coach, we make decisions based on what is best for the team. Parents make decisions based on what they feel is best for their child. As a parent myself, I understand that sometimes a parent’s love overrules logic or reason.

This is very true. Now, some parents think outside the benefit for their own child, but that is hard. In the end we always protect what is best for our family.

What I think is sad, is that often times the two conflict. Often times what is best for the team is not what is best for you. Working as coach and convincing someone to do something that might not be best for them is very hard. Add on the fact that now parents will take the side of the kid and it makes a coaches life very difficult.

This is the part of coaching that they don’t teach you while you cheer. I learned tons of technique, tons of tips and tricks, but this is a skill I was never taught. I’m still working on handling these items, and if you look at my last year of coaching, this could really be my largest struggle, but I feel I’m making progress. This post provides a couple of suggestions for handling this, worth the read if your a coach.

I’m retired

After 12 years of training cheerleading, I retired yesterday. I soft retired last year, but I found myself really missing it and wanting to get back involved. I joined the CheerGyms.com open team and cheered for them throughout the season. While I enjoyed cheering for the team, the logistics of the situation didn’t work out for me. The team originally said they would be splitting time between both gyms. One in San Jose and the other in Concord. San Jose was 30 minutes away, Concord was about an 70 minutes away. I decided to do the team anyway. The drive meant that I was up before 8 most Sundays. I couldn’t go out late with friends on Saturday for fear of being to too tired at practice. On top of the cheering aspect I coached a local high school. Coaching would take up Friday nights with football games, which meant that I really didn’t have a weekend.

So, I’ve made a decision, and this time I’m going to try to keep to it. I’m going to retire from cheering myself. I’m still going to coach. I don’t think I’ll ever be removed from the sport completely, but for now I’m a coach and not a cheerleader. I feel I can be a better coach then cheerleader as this point. If it ever comes back to the point where I feel in shape enough to cheer and find a team convenient enough to be on, I’ll revisit it. For now, however, stick a fork in me, I’m done.