1st Place Level 3 All-Girl at Blackpool BCA Winter Weekender 2014

After recruiting around 20 new girls (including 5 new flyers!) to our Level 3 All-Girl Varsity Competition squad this year, making it the biggest squad we’ve ever had, we really had our work cut out to pull off a decent routine at the BCA Winter Weekender at the end of November with just 7 weeks of practices!

The dedication of the squad has been incredible, with daily conditioning and stretching as well as attending extra practices. We started working on the routine stunts at an early stage and have been so impressed with how quickly the squad progressed. As is usually the case, injuries and illness threatened to damage our competition performance but with the help and support of some of our Junior Varsity members, we managed to keep on track.

After our first full-out performance during a practice session, the squad was left both exhausted and terrified at the thought of performing the routine in front of a huge audience the following week. With barely any stunts or tumbles hitting – we knew we had a lot of work to do.

Competition day arrived and all 32 of the girls clambered on to the tiny coach to Blackpool looking far from ready to compete! Many of our international cheerleaders were confused at what Blackpool had to offer with its tacky lights, horse and carts and sticks of rock. That being said, the Winter Gardens venue is one of our favourite performance venues with tiered seating around the stage and a great atmosphere. Cheerleading competitions are perhaps one of the strangest places you will ever visit with a copious amounts of bows, glitter and fake tan.

As our performance wasn’t until 5pm, it meant we had time for all 35 of us to pile in to Pizza Express for a cheeky pre-comp salad (or pizza)! Post-lunch, it was time to get our game faces which meant donning the quiffs, bows, purple eye shadow and uniforms ready to warm-up for our performance.

The warm-up went surprisingly well which set us in good stead for our performance. We took to the stage and gave all we had. We had some minor issues with our first stunt section with a couple of cheerleaders coming down early but we recovered quickly in time for the jumps and tumbles section. Our pyramid, which is the part we had been most worried about, hit perfectly and our explosive dance finished the routine with sass.

Later that evening, we were ecstatic to hear ‘Durham Divas’ called as first place for our division – an incredible start to a very promising season ahead. Our next competitions will be the biggest of the season with a weekend away in Birmingham to compete at Future Cheer University Cheerleading Nationals and Future Cheer Heart of England on the 14th and 15th February. We are hoping to make our routine even bigger and better but this was certainly a great start with some great feedback from the judges!

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