Pi­lot Cheer Clinic

MISHAWAKA—The Bethel Cheer­lead­ing team here is putting on a Cheer Clinic, Jan. 26^th. It will be for kids rang­ing from four years old to fifth grade and it will be for the pur­pose of teach­ing youths some of the ba­sic build­ing blocks of cheer. A cheer clinic is gen­er­ally a one-day event, in which the cheer­lead­ing team will teaches the younger kids cheer ma­teriel, how to safely cheer and how cheer­lead­ing can be a very fun sport.  

“I’m re­ally ex­cited about this next cheer clinic,” said Alyssa How­ell, Head Cheer Coach, “we have about 15 kids signed up, which is re­ally good for this age range. We also have a big­ger team this year, so we have a lot more peo­ple to re­ally help these kids learn cheer and have fun while do­ing it.”  

One of the ben­e­fits of hav­ing a cheer clinic now in­stead of dur­ing the sum­mer, is that the young cheer­lead­ers will have the chance to per­form their new cheer rou­tine dur­ing half­time at a Bethel bas­ket­ball game. This is an op­por­tu­nity for the kids to get a first-hand cheer­lead­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and to learn more about cheer. 

This up­com­ing cheer clinic is one of many that Bethel’s Cheer­lead­ing team has put on and is some­thing they hope to con­tinue do­ing through­out the year. They host  clin­ics for dif­fer­ent age groups, us­ing the older age groups as a way to re­cruit new cheer­lead­ers for Bethel’s team.  

Putting on cheer clin­ics is a good way to fundraise for the Cheer­lead­ing team, and is also a great way to reach out to the com­mu­nity and get ex­po­sure for Bethel’s team, ac­cord­ing to How­ell.   

This past week­end our cheer team com­peted at Aquinas Col­lege in Grand Rapids. They started off with a five-point de­duc­tion for not meet­ing the ros­ter re­quire­ments; how­ever, that was not enough to stop them from plac­ing sec­ond in the com­pe­ti­tion.