All star cheerleading season opens door for competition outside school

By Jade Pham

The blue mat is scattered with cheerleaders, standing in perfect formation. Their jumps and stunts hit perfectly, along with basket tosses flying high. The music is blaring through the speakers set up for everyone in the room to hear. Girls and boys are donned in their team’s uniforms, hair and makeup done to match. It smells like hairspray, and there is a mix of anxiety and excitement in the air as they ready themselves for their performance.

As the high school competition cheerleaders finish their season with State, all star cheerleading is just getting started. But what’s the difference between the two anyway? And why do people from CF schools choose to do all star cheerleading instead of cheering for their school?

The differences aren’t just that all star is unrelated to school, but the fact that the all star team is separated in levels to accommodate to everyone’s level of skill and talent. All star is also a year round sport, and is not strictly seasonal.

And Rachel Schmid, a junior, is a part of the all star cheer team, TNT. She said she believes that her all star cheerleading team helps its participants progress more, and they also pay for required tumbling classes with great coaches, instead of having optional tumbling like they would in high school cheerleading.

“I liked the aspect of meeting new people and working with different ages rather than the same people we go to school with every day,” Schmid said.

But despite the different features that come with all star cheerleading, there are also drawbacks, one being that the costs of everything begin to add up. It costs $150 a month just to participate competitively, not including the additional costs of uniforms, tumbling classes and camps. The costliness of all star has become a drawback for some people, which is why some choose to do school cheer.

But like any committed team, the members look forward to pulling together for more than just the competition. “We are all like a family,” Schmid said. “All different ages coming together over one sport and cheering each other on and having overnight competitions together is so much fun.”