Velocity Cheer building toward new year

Sundays at the Brandon Eagles Gymnastics Centre are building toward the competition floor.

Counts are called out as high-energy tunes fill the gym while pom-poms flash and mats shift around with routines run on repeat. Every wobble, every reset and every clean take is working for what’s to come in the new year.

In March, Velocity Cheer — a first-year program based out of the Brandon Eagles gym — will make its first appearance at Turn Up The Heat, a dance and cheer competition hosted at the Southeast Event Centre in Steinbach.

“It’s what we’ve been preparing for a while now, so it’s just awesome to be able to work towards something,” said Velocity Cheer coach Larissa Gray.

In a hockey-first city, it marks something new. But for Gray, the scenes are all too familiar.

Gray, 40, grew up in Roblin, where she was involved in just about any type of dance since the age of four. She did everything from Ukrainian folk dance to jazz, tap, rhythmic gymnastics and then she eventually fell in love with cheerleading.

After her family moved to Winnipeg during her high school years, Gray began cheering at Dakota Collegiate, then continued at the University of Winnipeg, where she was later recruited by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League. A few years into her tenure with the blue and gold, Gray got married and had her son, Rider, and with motherhood calling, she knew it was time to put her cheer career aside.

Flash forward almost a decade, and now Gray lives just outside of Shilo but spends most of her days in Brandon, where she teaches Grade 7 and 8 at École New Era School, and on Sundays, steps onto the gym floor as a cheer coach.

“It’s like a full-circle moment. (Cheerleading has) been something that I’ve wanted to kind of circle back to for a long time now, but marriage, children, all of that definitely changed things,” Gray said. “The last few years I’ve been figuring out how to make it happen and lucky enough to have it work out this year.”

After cheerleading sat on the back burner for years, Gray decided to approach the Brandon Eagles last spring to see if they would be interested in hosting a program, and sure enough, the idea was reciprocated. But first, they needed to see how much interest was out there. To help test the waters, Gray partnered with Cheer Manitoba, who came to Brandon and hosted a drop-in workshop that took place in June.

Safe to say there was no danger of having an empty class.

“We had a really good response to our workshop because it filled up quickly, and in a couple of days it became full,” said Gray. “I was surprised how much interest there was because Brandon is known to be such a hockey town, but there was.”

And not just from Brandon. Young girls aged seven to 16 were coming from all over Westman, including Shilo, Virden, Minnedosa, Ninette and a few other areas.

By September, the program officially launched with three classes: U12 pom, U12 stunt, and U16 stunt. The terms “pom” and “stunt” represent two different types of cheerleading, with pom being more performative cheer using precise, sharp movements with hip-hop choreography using pom-poms, while stunt is the more technical and athletic-focused style, which involves tosses, jumps, tumbling and human pyramids.

The three classes had drawn in even more ears after the workshop via word of mouth, and soon enough, both U12 classes filled up to max capacity with around 24 girls, while the U16 stunt group had around a dozen enrolled. Gray realized the numbers were going to be too much to handle on her own, so she brought in Kristina Ross as a reinforcement.

The two had never met before the program began and were introduced in an unexpected way through Ross’s brother, who was sitting in the bleachers during the workshop while his daughter took part on the floor. A brief conversation led to Gray and her connecting within a matter of days, with Ross chomping at the bit to become the other coach and anchor to Velocity Cheer.

Like Gray, Ross cheered during her high school days at Crocus Plains Regional Secondary School, but also hadn’t been on a cheer floor in about 15 years — it was the same era, same learning curve and the same excitement about bringing something old back to life.

The two spent quite a bit of time re-teaching themselves about the sport with regard to what’s changed, what hasn’t and how they could map out the way they wanted their Sunday sessions structured. Gray and Ross also knew if they wanted to be the best mentors they could be, it would be a good idea for them to get back on the floor as well.

That decision came with equal parts nostalgia and the pain of growing older.

“It just makes me feel young again,” said Gray. “I know that I’m back to building a healthy lifestyle because cheerleading has so much physical demand, and Kris and I try to do as much as we can in practice, and the next day we really, in the end, also just have trouble going up the stairs.”

Sunday’s practices fly by in a tight, one-hour window that barely leaves time to breathe, with conditioning and dynamic stretching before getting into focused routines and stunts, and then ending it off with games and a cool-down. With many athletes still new to the sport, Gray and Ross stay on the floor demonstrating skills and pushing conditioning alongside them, spotting closely as stunts go up and reminding everyone results don’t come right away.

“Sometimes they’re really disappointed when a stunt falls, but it’s totally normal. We’re getting stronger and we’re doing really cool stunts that we couldn’t do in September and now can in December, so the sky is the limit for this squad,” Gray said.

“Building routines takes a lot of brain work, so not only physicality, but you have to make sure that you are thinking about what’s happening next in the routine, because you could potentially also get hurt if you’re not on the ball because we’re putting up some dangerous stunts. A lot goes into it, so they should be very proud so far.”

While some girls in the program have had some sort of dance background, none of the athletes across all three classes has been a part of a cheer team before. Quinn Calcut, a member of Cheer Velocity’s U12 stunt group, admitted she has mixed feelings looking ahead to the big competition in a few months.

“I’m very excited, but I’m also pretty nervous at the same time,” said the eight-year-old Shilo native. “I’ve never been in a competition before, so in case somebody messes up, or if I mess up, then I’ll be off count and skip something, and then it might look funny, but she (Gray) makes us step out of our comfort zone, but not like too much, so I like it.”

For Calcut, learning to move in perfect sync with her teammates has been the biggest challenge. But she’s not the only one.

Brandon’s Phoenix Martin, a 13-year-old on the U16 stunt team, is also trying to get on perfect timing.

“The most challenging part is definitely being in sync with everyone else and knowing exactly what to do and what count to do it on,” she said. “It takes a little bit of time just to talk it out with everyone and know exactly what to do.

“I think I’ve gained a lot of perseverance and strength because a lot of stunts sometimes don’t work out the way that you expect them to, but I think it’s important that you keep pushing. I think it’s helped me really think about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it.”

Martin began dancing around age two, and at 10, she started competing in jazz, ballet and lyrical, but never cheer. She didn’t know much about it other than from a few videos on YouTube, so she’s grateful she’s now able to try it out for herself and get a taste of something different.

“It’s super cool getting to try something new and getting to experience what cheerleading is like,” Martin said. “It’s very different than what I’m used to, but it’s fun doing the tosses and flying up in some stunts.

“I’m very excited to compete and show everyone what we’ve worked on and the routine that we’re doing.”

For a program still in its first season, the energy already feels bigger than the room, and it’s only just getting started.

“That’s why I love it so much, it brings happiness. How can you dance and not be happy? This is the first year and it’s only going to get bigger in the second year.”

» mdelucataronno@brandonsun.com