Metropolitan State University of Denver students Sydney McCullum and Chris Flores have plenty to cheer about.
Seven months of grueling two-hour practices four days a week are about to pay off. This weekend, McCullum, Flores and 10 other members of the MSU Denver Club Cheerleading squad will head to Anaheim, California, to show off their tumbling and dance moves at the USA (United Spirit Association) Collegiate Championships.
Each year for more than two decades, the association’s national championships have hosted nearly 1,000 athletes, competing in nearly 15 divisions for ultimate cheer glory. This year will mark the MSU Denver squad’s fourth consecutive appearance in the competition.
The team will perform highly synchronized routines to four or five songs ranging from hip-hop to oldies. The Roadrunners will debut their routine at the Men’s Basketball game against Chadron State on Thursday at the Auraria Event Center.
The hardest part, McCullum and Flores said, isn’t the tumbling or building three-story people pyramids. It’s staying synchronized, making sure everyone makes exactly the same move at exactly the same moment. And while the competition may be tough, the few minutes of performance “go by so fast” that it’s hard to remember them, McCullum said.
The Club Cheer team with President Janine Davidson, Ph.D.
McCullum and Flores came to MSU Denver as seasoned cheer veterans, Flores at Denver South High School and McCullum at Wheat Ridge High School. And there may be a touch of the adrenaline junkie in both. Flores loves piloting small Cessna planes as part of his Aviation and Aerospace Science major and hopes to spend his career at the controls of commercial aircraft. But even piloting a plane may be too orderly and predictable for McCullum, who is a Fire and Emergency Response Administration major and hopes to be an emergency medical technician.
Flores noted that a lot of people don’t consider cheerleading a sport. Those people, of course, are wrong. Aside from the jumping, tumbling and vaulting over the bodies of others, four hours of cheer practice often leave Flores feeling like he played four quarters of football. “My body hurts 24/7 during the season,” he said.
The payoff is participating together as a team, learning to work with and rely on teammates. “Everyone has a job to do, and you support each other,” McCullum said.
Of course, there is also the fun of traveling to competitions, meeting hundreds of other skilled cheerleaders and getting to show off the results of all that practice.
“Win or lose,” Flores said, “You are proud of what you did.”
