KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily Bruin Senior Staff The UCLA cheer
squad helps keep the crowd fired up at the Sept. 16 Michigan
game.
By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
It takes a lot to be a good cheer team.
Dedication ““ enough to stand practicing every morning from
6:30 to 9. Enough to keep trying out for the team when you’ve
broken your ankle at tryouts.
Innovation ““ enough to completely redesign a routine the
night before a competition because a teammate just sprained her
ankle.
Chemistry ““ enough to withstand the loss of nine veterans
and still build a team worthy of watching.
And definitely trust.
“The hardest thing is trusting someone to throw you 35
feet in the air,” sophomore Alexis Zanolli said. “I try
not to (be scared); I’m pretty fearless, but I’ve been
dropped before.”
So why is trust so important?
“When I don’t have confidence, that’s when
scary things happen,” Zanolli said.
But whatever it is that’s needed to build a good cheer
team, it seems the 2000-01 UCLA squad has it all.
“This year, especially, our team dynamics are just
great,” said junior co-captain Jessica Lee, who is in her
second year with the squad. “Our team is so close. It’s
because we have to depend on each other for everything.”
That’s the thing about cheerleading ““ it’s the
ultimate team sport. As Zanolli pointed out, a cheerleader’s
safety depends on the ability of her partner to catch her, or the
stability of the shoulders she’s standing on.
It would seem, then, that this year’s team should be a
little shaky, because out of six men and six women on the squad,
nine of them are new to the team.
This was a problem in the beginning.
“We had a rough start, practicing differently because we
didn’t know each other,” Lee said.
But then she pointed out why the team was able to overcome this
setback.
“Everyone is so willing to work, and so eager and
hard-working. Everyone’s so hard on him or herself.
We’re our own worst critics because we don’t want to
let the team down.”
It goes back to chemistry.
“We’re like a great group of friends who hang around
together and happen to cheer,” said co-captain Kyle
Buinch
The team should be a good one this year, and when they compete
at the USA Collegiate Nationals in February they are expected to
contend.
This doesn’t mean, however, that being a member of UCLA
cheer is a walk in the park. Or a cartwheel in the grass.
The team has many community commitments. On Fridays some of them
attend the Bruins breakfast club event, where Bruin patrons eat
breakfast with the cheerleaders and a few of the football players.
UCLA Cheer also participates in various outreach activities,
teaching inner-city cheerleading squads, and working the James West
Fulfillment Fund, in which they throw a Christmas party for
disabled kids.
Aside from these commitments, the team must be at the Wooden
Center every morning at 6:30 for their two-and-a-half hour
practice. Twice a week in the evenings they also meet to practice
their tumbling.
It’s all too perfect being a part of something that many
people do not even consider a sport so much as a performance.
Asked if she thought cheerleading was a sport, Zanolli answered,
“According to the NCAA and athletic department, no. According
to most of the world, yes.
“It has evolved from just supporting a team into something
that combines dance, acrobatics and gymnastics. I consider it a
sport.”
Lee would have to agree.
“It requires just as much athleticism as almost any sport
at UCLA,” she said. “It’s definitely a dangerous
sport. We have to have endurance and physical strength “¦ but
it’s mentally challenging as well. We’re just having to
get over fears constantly, and while we’re doing that, we
have to perform as if it’s the easiest thing in the world
““ and smile through it all.”
It’s easy to have fears in cheerleading.
The last major injury the team had was at tryouts, when junior
Jen Blank landed one foot on the tumbling pad and one foot on the
gymnastics floor. She broke her ankle.
Before that, Buinch said, the most serious injury was a few
years ago at camp after a cheerleader landed a straight body
flip.
“She landed with locked-out legs on the grass and crashed
a disc in her back,” Buinch said. “By the end of the
football season it was so bad she had to leave the
squad.”
But due to good spotting, those injuries are rare. Still, the
cheerleaders are fully aware of the risks they’re taking.
“There are always tumbles and falls and bruises and cuts,
but it comes with the territory,” Lee said. “It is
scary, but once you get over it, it’s so much fun.”
Other problems come up in the course of cheering.
One time at camp a member of the squad sprained her ankle
shortly before the team was supposed to perform before hundreds of
people. The night before, they frantically rearranged a routine
they’d been practicing for two weeks, trying to adjust for
the loss of one key member.
They wound up taking 2nd place out of 20 teams.
“It always happens. Even at our first game, we had planned
out this extensive routine to do for the tailgaters and we found
out that the space we have is just a fourth of the space that we
planned,” Lee said. “We’re always throwing stuff
together at the last minute.”
Despite the problems, the rewards have been infinite.
“You’re at the center of 85,000 people screaming and
cheering. You’re supporting your team,” Zanolli said
when asked what was the most rewarding thing about cheering.
She recalled a specific game that exemplified this: “The
Alabama game was amazing, winning that, feeling the players’
energy “¦ seeing myself on national television,” Zanolli
said.
After all, the cheerleaders are among the biggest fans on
campus. What else would make them go through a two-week tryout
process that includes an interview and two unofficial six-hour
clinics along with the required tryout days?
“I think all the girls on the team are just Bruin
fanatics,” Lee said.
The cheer squad has a long year ahead of it, what with
volleyball games, basketball games, and football games for a team
in a place no one thought they’d be.
But that’s okay. They’re ready for all of it: the
complications, the time commitment, the possible injuries.
Because whatever it takes to succeed, the UCLA cheerleaders have
got it.