Stunt Evolution
Cheer team has big plans for its big event.
Romer Bautista, staff
If you watched any Bison football game this season, you likely enjoyed a day of exciting football with terrific plays and jarring hits.
You would have been just as likely, then, to have enjoyed the hard work put in by the Bison cheer team. You know, that lovely group of boys and girls who, rain or shine, cold weather or warm, were out on the field jumping, flipping, and chanting in support of our Bison team.
But, unlike the Bison football team, the Vanier Cup did not mark the end of the season for the Bison cheer team. In between the rigorous training that the 25 members of the cheer team go through each week, both in practices and in the weight room, the team still finds time to support Bison Sports. They can currently be seen helping pump up the crowds at Bison basketball contests.
And as if their plates aren’t full enough, this Friday, Feb. 1, they are organizing their second annual fundraising event, Stunt Evolution, which is being held at the Investors Group Athletic Centre on the Fort Garry campus. The team hopes to raise funds to put towards the costs that they incur throughout the year: jerseys, trips to competitions, and cheer camps.
The event itself will be a showcase of cheerleading demonstrations from not only the Bison cheer team, but from two other cheerleading groups within the province as well: Cheer X-treme and the Winnipeg Elite Cheer team. The evening will also consist of contests and mini-competitions.
One thing that the Bison cheer team hopes to accomplish with this event is to break down the typical stereotype associated with cheerleaders.
“Cheerleading is stereotyped as blonde-bimbos, short skirts, and pom-poms. I don’t think people actually recognize the cheerleading that we do. We hardly actually physically cheer at games. We’ve taken out the whole synchronize arm motions,” Kaitlyn Hope, co-captain of the Bison cheer team told the Manitoban.
This season, their fourth season at the U of M, the Bison cheer team has made huge strides in changing peoples’ views of their team. Helping lead this change has been the presence of four male members to the squad.
“Girls can do a lot, to an extent. Then you need to bring the guys in to bump up the skills, because they are that much stronger and they can throw that much higher. So having these guys on the team [this year] all of a sudden allowed us to do things that we probably would have never been able to do with the team that we had [last year],” said Hope.
The team’s whole range of skill will be on display on Friday. Despite their impressive performances at Bison football games, Hope assures readers that the team has a lot more to show. “For a lot of people, they only see us at the football games. We’re limited to what we can do there by ‘You can’t go to this spot, you can only go this far in each direction.’ The fact that we’re not on sprung floors, we don’t do a lot of our gymnastic skills. We have some amazing tumblers. So, we get to showcase everything that we can do.”
Another reason that Stunt Evolution is such an important event for the Bison cheer team is that it is used as a major recruiting tool when it comes to getting possible members to try out for next year.
“This year has been the best year we’ve ever had, but hopefully not the best we’ll ever have, because every year we’re hoping to grow.”
