Valley club looking for kids with cheerleading spirit

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

Some might not call it a sport, but Megan Spencer defies anyone to say it’s not physical, active or teambuilding.

“Cheerleading is a lot of work,” she says. “It’s strength, it’s working together: you have to have the same ryhthm as your bases at the bottom and you have to be solid on the top. You have to know what you’re doing or someone could get hurt.”

Spencer is launching the Valley’s first competitive cheerleading club this fall, based in Berwick but intended to attract youths ages five to 18 from any community or school interested in the dance, gymnastics and competitive challenges of the sport.

“It’s really fun,” she says. Watching competitions on TV and even travelling to watch a few in the U.S. has been eye-opening - and inspiring.

“It’s what we always think of: people flying in the air, flipping backwards. I wanted to do that.”

She got into the sport as a student at Northeast Kings, joining the school’s first squad, and being named captain two of the three years she stayed with it. At the University of New Brunswick, she competed at nationals and ended up on the sixth-place team. She’s taken courses and clinics and been certified through the Nova Scotia School Athletic Federation and the United States Cheerleading Association. Last year, she started NKEC’s team back up again and will continue to coach the high school club, but wants to have the community club for a wider reach.

“There are stereotypes,” she acknowledges, “and some try and keep those going. I want cheerleaders who know they are a positive role model, they can be graceful - and graceful when they lose. You have to be committed and train. There is a job for everyone on a team.”

Spencer intends, too, to draw on her dance experience from a youth of eight to two years’ recent training in Halifax and certification as a jazz and ballet teacher through the Canadian dance teachers’ association. With help from former cheerleading teammates, her high school team members as volunteers and co-coach Daisy Day, the Annapolis Valley Cheer Club; Spencer is sure “the interest is there” to get this new club off the ground.

Spencer is also looking at the club as a way to put herself through Acadia’s arts and then education programs in the next few years, while keeping in touch with the youth she enjoys working with.

“It’s something I love, I don’t know a lot about business but I can make it work - and people love cheerleading once they try it.

“We’ll go to competitions, maybe go to some high school games and community things and demonstrate what we do, the kids love going in parades, I’m looking at camps down the road - those things are fun.”

She’s registering youth now, but will also be at the Berwick townwide registration event Sept. 5 and 6, with the intention to start programs in mid-September.



WEBLINKS

www.annapolisvalleycheerclub.tripod.com

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