4 FEATURE
MORE THAN JUST ACHEER
Kansas cheerleaders flip,tumble and practice twice per week to be a part of the KU Spirit Squad
By Brenna Hawley bhawley@kansan.com
They flip. They fly. They twist. They tumble. And they cheer.
Meet the Kansas cheerleaders, 30 students who work overtime to entertain fans during football games. Some have been cheering and tumbling since they were young, while others played other sports in school before coming to the
senior, joined her high school's cheerleading squad during her sophomore year as a joke, but by the following year, she knew she wanted to cheer in college. There's even a joke about her in her family — she is 4-foot-10 and has brothers who were very athletic in high school, but she's the one who got an athletic scholarship to a university. She's been on the KU squad now since her freshman year, and this month she was featured as Sportsll-
biggest sports schools in the country.
What it takes
Corey Stone, cheerleading coach, says there's a lot that makes the University appealing to potential cheerleaders. For one thing, he says, they cheer at very few losing games between football and basketball. Then there are the tryouts. The squad's Web site, kuchee.com, lists numerous skills needed to make it through
most of them have been tumbling for 10 years."
A former KU cheerleader himself, Stone cheered when the squad won the National Cheerleaders Association's national contest in 1995. He was in a five-year program and watched the cheerleaders tumbling at games. He'd taken gymnastics classes in high school and was inspired.
"I saw guys tumbling and thought,'I
"The guys, they have a lot of different backgrounds. The girls, most of them have been tumbling for 10 years." Corey Stone, cheerleading coach
University and realizing they wanted to be a part of KU Cheer. But all have one thing in common — they want to make fans excited during games.
Take Scott Borgmeir, for example. In high school, Borgmeir, Overland Park senior, could do a back flip, but his true sport was diving. He joined his high school cheerleading squad anyway and decided to continue in college.
Then there's Lizzie Bellinger, Bellinger, Plano, Texas.
Types of cheers
lustrated.com's cheerleader of the week.
The team has three basic types of cheers: stunting, pyramids and basket tosses.
Left and center photos by Weston White/KANSAN
Right photo by David McKinney/KU University Relations
These two, as well as the other 28 KU cheerleaders, put in hours of practice every week to give a great performance at every football game. They lead the crowd in cheers and perform stunts during lulls in the game to make fans' times more enjoyable. And they carry on a tradition of a great game day atmosphere at one of the
STUNTING One guy holding up one girl
to the final stage of tryouts: Standing back handsprings, roundoff back hand-spring tucks, toss chairs, and many other skills that seem like a foreign language to the untrained eye. But the applicants have a variety of training.
"The guys, they have a lot of different backgrounds," Stone says, "The girls.
PYRAMID Cheerleaders 21/2 people high
could do that," he says.
Stone cheered at the University for four years and continued on to assistant coach the cheerleading squad at the University of Iowa along with his wife Nami, where they both got their masters degrees. Now they're both coaching the squad here.
They hold tryouts in May for the next year's squad
BASKET TOSS Multiple guys throwing one girl
THE WAVE SEPTEMBER 25,2009
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN