The students holding pom-poms on the sidelines of Canyons District prep sport competitions are a far cry from the cheerleaders of yesteryear. Gone are the days of cheerleading as a social club or an extracurricular to encourage school spirit.
Indeed, times have changed. Cheer, to be sure, has entered a new era.
As seen on such shows at Netflix’s “Cheer,” students on CSD’s prep competitive cheer squads hit the weights like defensive linemen, have the stamina of wrestlers, flip like Olympic gymnasts, and boast dancing skills rivaling the choreographed squads who back up pop divas in music videos.
Whitney Lunt, the Corner Canyon coach of the reigning 6A state champion cheer squad, says today’s cheer teams are made up of student-athletes who are dedicated to not just supporting their schools but competing at an elite level. Lunt and three of her squad’s captains — Elisha Wong, Reagan Alleman, and Ava Johnson — appear on this week’s Connect Canyons to dispel notions about cheer, talk about the risks and physical demands, and getting to the heart of what makes cheer such a compelling sport.
“I think from a coaching perspective, if we even look at when Corner Canyon opened 12 years ago, our main purpose was just to support all the teams and programs at the school. We competed on the side, but nobody cared or took it seriously. All they cared about is if we were at the games,” Lunt said. “So, watching it change over the years to the point that now we also are a sport and competing as part that … it’s really upped” the demands on the skill level of the teams.
Cheering on the sidelines is the “easy part of our job,” says Lunt, whose cheer team has won back-to-back state UHSAA state titles in the 6A classification. “The true athletic talent comes from the competition.”
This year’s UHSAA competitive cheer state competition is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 22 and Friday, Jan. 24 at Utah Valley University. Lunt’s CCHS team qualified to compete for the 6A state trophy and Brighton High’s squad earned the right to advance to the 5A state championship.
On the podcast, Johnson revealed she’s been tumbling for more than a dozen years, and she says the team’s current competition routine requires her to perform such challenging feats as a “round-off, backhand spring, full.”
For those unfamiliar with gymnastics, she explains that “a full is where you’re basically doing a backflip with a twist, and then landing on your feet. And then the round-off backhand spring before that is where you’re running and you put your hands on the ground, flip your legs over and then you do a flip with your hands on the ground going into the flip without your hands in a twist.”
Coach Lunt says her team’s tumbling passes are challenging — by anyone’s standards.
“I say this with all the humbleness that I can muster,” she says with a well-deserved pride of a program she’s built. “At nationals, we will have 23 people on the mat. Fourteen of them will do standing handsprings into fulls. Fifteen out of the 23 do running handsprings into fulls. Plus, they all throw standing tucks, and we have specialty passes throughout. Nobody tumbles like Corner Canyon Cheer.”
At today’s competitive cheer competitions, the teams hit the floor in three categories that test each team’s ability to lead a crowd in a cheer, complete complex dance choreography, and skills in stunts and tumbling. A panel of judges score the teams based on execution and level of difficulty.
Despite the misconceptions — and challenges — one of the best things about being on a cheer squad like Corner Canyon’s is “the friendships you make,” said Alleman. “You know, because when you get to cheer and spend all your time with (the members of the team), you really create a strong bond with 36 different girls, and they become the people that truly understand. At the end of the day, it’s 36 girls that you have by your side that you know will always be with you. You have their back, and they have your back, and it’s really a relationship like no other.”