Too Big to Fly

I was recently in the warm up area of a competition.  The large room was filled with mats and those mats were filled with teams.  My team was stretching out and I had a moment to observe other teams on the floors.  Just then, one high school team marched right past me in a single file line.  It was either the bright red uniforms (I like bright colors) or the military-like precision of their movements that initially caught me attention.  But something else about this team captivated me.  Every girl who walked past our team seemed to be almost the exact same size. 

I caught myself trying to find “the little” girls in the back of the line.  Nope.  Every one of them looked like fit and healthy bases.  Each girl was between 5″6 and 5″10.  I’d guess they all weighed around 120 pounds, give or take 10 pounds.  After stretching (because a proper warm up is very important), the red team formed up into stunt groups.  The tallest of the girls lined up as back spots.  All 4 flyers appeared to be as tall as or taller than their bases.  Again, they looked fit and healthy, but anything BUT “stick figures.”

The red team has such a professional and serious approach to everything I had observed to this point (including walking into the room), so my expectations were relatively high for their skills.  But I was not expecting what I saw.  Squad Full-Up Liberties.  I think my jaw dropped a little.  Double Downs.  Not the one’s where the flyer lands sort of on her side and the bases have to “bounce” her the rest of the way.  These were full 720 degree rotations with room for the flyers to catch their bases shoulders in the cradles.  But they weren’t finished.  Reload to Crunch.  Full Up (from the Crunch!) to Heel Stretch.  Then they pulled Bow and Arrows.  By the way, there were no front spots on the stunts.

OK, you kind of had to be there to appreciate how much this team stood out.  This was not an all star team.  It was a high school.  The bases were not 200 pound guys, or even 160 pound girls.  They looked like average, athletic girls.  The smallest flyer looked 20 pounds heavier than almost every other girl in the air.  In fact, they looked heavier than some of the girls that were basing them.

By the way, this amazing red team went on the throw beautiful high basket tosses, an extensive pyramid sequence that was poetry in motion and ended the routine with 5 Single-Base Extensions.  No, not 4, like in their main stunt.  They did 5 stunts using 15 girls and the other 5 girls threw standing tucks.

Watching this team execute their skills, it would be easy to write them off as a fluke.  They are that rare “perfect” team that was somehow blessed with flawless technique.  However, this would be lazy.  If you’ve been around cheerleading long enough, you might just remember that this used to be the norm.  OK, maybe not the difficulty.  That has gone up exponentially.  I’m talking about the fact that flyers were not always freakishly small.  Somewhere along the line, we stopped putting “normal” sized girls in the air.  Somewhere along the line, instead of insisting on perfect technique, we started recruiting 8th graders in the hallways for varsity flying spots.  And over time, we have formed a mindset among coaches and cheerleaders alike that an otherwise athletic girl can be too big to fly.  We need to rethink that mindset!

It really is all about technique.  Think about a handstand.  If a 120 pound girl can hold her own body weight (comfortably) in a handstand, then she should be able to hold 120 pound flyer (comfortably) in an extended stunt.  And that is by herself.  For a Double-Base stunt, weight should not be a factor at all.  The key is to use good conditioning and to reinforce proper technique.

Speaking of conditioning, how many kids on your cheerleading team are unable to do a correct push up?  I’m serious.  I bet there are several.  Maybe even a lot.  Hey, I coached a varsity team recently where maybe 4 out of 20 kids could do a push up.  It happens.  It shouldn’t, but it does.  We need to fix this.  We need our cheerleaders to have at least enough upper body and core strength to do a push up, instead of going out looking for smaller and smaller flyers.

And speaking of technique, it comes from consistency.  It also comes from NOT giving up on a girl who has flown all through middle school and suddenly hit puberty and started growing.  Don’t get me wrong.  There are times when a flyer just isn’t working out and she needs to be reassigned to a different role.  However, an experienced and talented flyer doesn’t forget how to fly just because she turned 15 (or 14, or 13).

What has happened is we have been eroding our base of good flyers (that was a pun, by the way) by pulling the smallest and youngest kids off of their youth or JV team and putting them on the junior, senior and Varsity teams.  That means the flyers have never had to learn to be tight and hold themselves correctly because they’ve always just been muscled around by older bases.  It means bases have never had to learn correct technique because they’ve had Barbie Doll sized girls to stunt with.  Bases also have not been developing strength like they would with normal-sized flyers.  Over the years, even though difficulty has increased, technique has been getting worse.

Personally, I am tired of seeing sloppy “elite” stunts.  I am tired of seeing 8th graders flying on 12th grade bases.  I am REALLY sick of seeing the same 6th grade flyer in the same all star gym’s Youth, Junior, Senior and Senior Coed routines.  But what I am especially sick of, and what I think is at the root of the problem, is the notion that someone is too big to fly.

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