TRU Cheerleaders prepare for University World Cup Championship

The WolfPack’s Team Black is the only team from Western Canada to win a bid to the international event and they did so in their first year competing at the premier level.

Head coach Meaghan Blakely says practices start early for her team.

“We train about 12 hours a week, so it’s a lot of 6:00 a.m. practices, it’s a lot of hours here and there just conditioning, it’s going to the gym constantly,” Blakely said.

Blakely is preparing the cheerleaders for the biggest competition of their athletic careers so far.

“It’s literally the best in the world,” she said. “There are going to be countries there such as Ireland, China, Australia, England. There are only about four other teams from all across Canada that got bids, so we will see them down there.”

TRU WolfPack’s Team Black is only into its second year of competing at the premier level, the highest level of competitive cheerleading.

In March, the team competed at the True North Championships in Alberta, where it won a bid to the ICU University World Cup Cheerleading Championships.

“When it comes to the bids, they don’t give it out to first place, it’s all on judges’ discretion,” said Assistant Coach Haille Sparling. “You could get the highest score in the routine, but if they don’t feel that you’re good enough to go to worlds, you’re not going to get that bid, so the fact that we were all sitting there and all of a sudden it was ‘full paid bid Team Black’ it was sort of surreal and I still get goosebumps about it because none of us were really expecting it.”

The full paid bid covers around $1,000 in expenses per person.

“The only thing that we as athletes have to pay for is our flights and our food,” Sparling said, “and as university students on top of being student-athletes, we don’t have a lot of time to work to save up and we don’t have just our parents just being able to help fund us. We’ve done a lot of fundraising but this full paid bid has been the reason we’ve been able to go.”

The team will be competing in the All Girl Premier Division, with a highly technical routine and stunts that hit the high range on the judge’s scoresheet.

“Our team goal is to hit, and to hit at worlds means to properly execute our routine with no deductions,” Blakely said. “It means no falls, no bobbles, it’s doing your routine perfectly.”

The competition will be held at the ESPN World of Sports in Orlando on January 16, which means Team Black has just over a month to perfect their routine.

“Right now, I think it’s just becoming confident in the skills that we have and going out on the floor and knowing we can do it and really coming together and uniting as a team and just pinpointing the little things we need to work on, like not breaking down each skill and not thinking ahead and just believing in ourselves,” said Britney Fox, one of the team captains.

In addition to proving themselves to be some of the best cheerleaders in the world, Team Black hopes to show off just how athletic the sport really is.

“I really hope that it shows people that this is what cheerleading is,” Fox said. “It’s not just pom poms and standing on the sidelines; it’s tumbling, it’s stunting, it’s jumping, it’s dancing.”

by Jill Sperling

TRU Cheerleaders prepare for University World Cup Championship

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