Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

GIMME A T! GIMME A R! GIMME A U!

WolfPack Cheerleaders ready for World Cup Cheer Championships in Orlando

Jan 11, 2023 | 3:17 PM

KAMLOOPS — The TRU WolfPack cheerleaders spent the weekend and early part of this week ironing out any wrinkles in the routines they’ve spent months perfecting.

When you’re preparing to compete against the rest of the world, every little detail matters.

“We’ll be going up against other Canadian teams and Mexico, by the looks of it,” Head Coach Meaghan Blakely explains. “With University Premier, it’s really high-paced, action-packed stuff where there’s something crazy happening every single second. It’s really easy for something to go wrong because it’s moving so fast.”

The University Premier team is made up of the top 20 athletes in the WolfPack cheer program. They’re the athletes you see flying through the air, tumbling across the mats and climbing atop one another.

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“As a flyer, I have to trust all four people under me to not drop me, to make sure I’m in the air to make sure I’m able to do what I need to do,” fourth-year cheerleader Ava Johnson explains. “Same with my bases — they need to trust me not to fall on them. For each piece of our routine, each person has to trust every single other person on the team to do their job. It makes us such a tight-knit family.”

The WolfPack has been practicing twice a day in preparation for the University Worlds, which is an extremely high level of commitment for these student-athletes.

“It goes into pretty much every aspect of your life,” Alyse Coates, third-year cheerleader explains. “What you’re doing, the choices you’re making, how you can be your best self to be there for your team because as soon as someone is unfocused, it makes the entire team unfocused. We rely so much on each other, everyone’s commitment has to be up to par to make this team successful.”

The WolfPack will also compete in the Gameday Divison at Worlds, which is more of a traditional cheer discipline.

“Gameday cheer pays homage to the traditional style of cheer. That’s what a lot of people think of — you know in the ‘80s and the ‘90s, with the pompoms and the flags,” Blakely explains. “The signs and the big chants — very showy.”

For the athletes, this competition is a culmination of all the work they’ve put in — at practice, in the classroom and in their day-to-day lives.

“With how much we’ve been training and how hard we’ve been working, I just want to see us step up to what we know we can do the best,” Coates says. “We just want to come off that floor happy, no matter what happens, and know that we put our best work out there.”

“It’s just so amazing to be able to perform for your country, for your town and show them what you can do,” Johnson says. “I just love it so much.”

The University World Cup Cheerleading Championship takes place from January 13 to 15 at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando. TRU will compete on Sunday.