YOUNG MANITOBANS MAKING THEIR MARK AT INTERNATIONAL CHEERLEADING EVENTS

Young Manitobans are showing out at cheerleading competitions that bring together teams from across the globe. 

There's no shortage of teams from Manitoba who are competing at highly touted international competition down in Orlando, Fla. The 2024 Cheer Summit Championships will see teams from places like the U.S., Japan, Australia and Germany compete at the event. 

"It's very exciting for the kids and definitely feels like a new chapter for a lot of us," said Vision Cheer Company president Nick Verburg.

Vision Cheer Company is in its fourth year of operations and it's the first time the team is competing at this particular event, said Verburg. He said it's a 23-person roster competing in the under-16 Level 3 field. 

Local club Central Cheer also had a team competing in that division and Gabrielle Boily, 15, said it's the place to be. 

"Lots of people want to be in this division to be the best," she said, on the phone from Orlando Thursday night. 

This is the second time Boily has competed at the Summit and said with a new team this year, it's been great to see their progression together as a group. She said when the season started, many people didn't know each other and some were new to the Level 3 skill level. 

"We all really just came together as a team and pushed our absolute hardest," she said. "So, being here today with a lot of girls who haven't even competed at this level is very surreal and it's a very good thing to be proud about." 

U-12 team makes history at youth event 

It was a historic competition for Cheer Integrity Athletics, whose under-12 Level 1 team became the first ever from the province to make it to day two of what's called the Youth Summit event, according to Cheer Manitoba president Melissa Skrabek-Senecal. 

The event took place in Tampa, Fla, near the end of April.

"It was a historical run for those kids," she said. 

The moment was overwhelming and exciting for the kids and their parents, said Cheer Integrity Athletics' program director Danessa Picard. She also said the Youth Summit is like the junior Olympics for under-12 cheerleading. 

Picard said it was the "ultimate outcome" for the Level 1 team and showed the youngsters their hard work can pay off in a big way.

"Just to see the pure joy was something else," she said. "And not to mention all their parents start crying … it was just great, it was phenomenal. 

Picard hopes the success of the team and other groups from the province helps to cast the sport in a positive light. 

"I hope that people take away that cheerleading really is a sport and that it is within reach for people in Manitoba to get to that ultimate level of whatever it is they are passionate about and really competing in," she said. 

It's a sentiment Verburg also shared.

"As cheerleading's growing in Manitoba, we're still doing a lot of work to get past the hair flips and the pom-poms and get into the real sense of the athletic version of that," he said.

"We're associated with the Bombers cheer team and that is still a part of cheerleading, but when we're doing the competitive cheerleading here, it's the tumbling and stuff that you see gymnastics, dancing, jumping and then stunting is obviously the big part where you have people lifting each other up in the air and throwing them and having them do flips and twists and stuff like that."

2024-05-03T13:15:20Z dg43tfdfdgfd