Cheerdancers bring it on; time to make them count?
MANILA, Philippines—They train for a year, suffer grotesque injuries athletes of other sports only read about and in one blinding explosion of alma mater love, pour everything they have on the hardcourt in an event that sends UAAP cash registers into a ringing frenzy.
At the end of the day, though, when plucked-off pieces of pompoms are swept from the coliseum floor, when the lights go out and the sounds are muted, they are relegated to videos posted on social networking and video sharing sites, talked about in blogs and coffee conversations and basically reduced to a memory that builds up anticipation for next year’s contest.
Time to shower these cheerdancers with the relevance they deserve, UAAP?
“Why not?” UP Pep squad mentor NJ Antonio said when asked if the annual cheerdance competition should perhaps be calendared as a regular sport that counts in the overall standings.
“It (cheerdance) is mixed with various sports like gymnastics and dance.”
Sunday’s cheerdance competition, which put emphasis on gymnastics-like execution, proved just that.
The UP Pep Squad bagged the overall title, the group’s sixth in the history of the competition, with defending champion Far Eastern U knocked to second place and the UST Salinggawi Dance Troupe rounding up the podium at third.
Behind the beaming smiles and perfect execution, there’s the one-year preparation that members of every cheerdance corps goes through for that shot at glory, a routine that’s similar to those that varsity players go through.
In fact, it’s the memory of all that hard work that helps calm the same kind of nerves that get athletes jittery pre-competition.
“I don’t know if I can perform well enough because of severe nervousness,” said Mara Gesmundo, president of the Salinggawi Dance Troupe, the eight-time cheerdance champion.
“But once the music plays and I hear the drum beats, that’s the moment when I become confident, because of all the hard work I put in.”
And the work is truly hard. They’re no longer rah-rah girls and guys of old, when skipping into game breaks with perky smiles and fluffy pompoms summed up cheerdance.
They train so hard, they suffer the same injuries athletes do.
“In 2007 I had a back and neck injury and that was two months before the competition. It was hard for me not to be part of the team so I really endured the pain of it,” said UP Pep Squad standout Frances Fleta.
And they rebound from those setbacks the same way athletes do—with grim determination and single-mindedness..
“I’ve had injures but it never was something that hindered me,” Gesmundo added. “Once you love what you’re doing it’s not tough anymore.”
And these are not normal injuries. Several years back, the Inquirer did interviews with cheerdancers and a lot of them revealed that they suffered broken bones and torn ligaments.
And they patiently worked their way back, with nothing more at stake than extra cash and the chance to represent one’s school ever so proudly.
“The injuries and the challenges that came, it taught us to be together. If you fall, you just have to get back up and fight,” Fleta added.
“What matters most is that we shared our talents and we made our community proud,” said Gesmundo
In front of 20,950 people, that’s what cheerdancers did. In intangible terms, they fanned the flames of school pride. They dug deep into their reserves and left everything on the court.
In tangible terms? They leapt, tumbled, back-flipped, cart-wheeled, twisted and flipped mid-air and danced like tomorrow was a rumor.
How about making them tangibly relevant too?
“I’m hopeful that the UAAP will start to take Cheerdance as a regular sport, all of the schools have cheering squads and all of them are good.” Antonio finished.
After all, with every dazzling move and spellbinding aerial maneuver executed under pressure, all for the school’s pride and glory, cheerdancers are much like the UAAP’s pampered basketball stars except for one thing: They only get one shot at glory.
Time to make that shot count.
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