'Cheer' Coach Vontae Johnson On Leadership, Teamwork, And Creating Space For All Types Of Black Boy Joy
essence.comCheer follows the team as they work to build human and spiritual pyramids. “The difference between cheer and football was we can get away in football with missing one block.
You can’t get away with dropping one stunt [in cheerleading],” he told ESSENCE. Johnson first learned how heavily teamwork impacted the sport shortly after swapping the football field for the cheer mat. “In our divisions, it’s so tight, you know?
So close, you can’t get away with certain little things,” he explained. Pursuing the National Cheerleaders Association’s Collegiate National Championship requires everyone to move in sync, from parents, to alumni, to coaching staff.
It’s one band, one sound – on steroids. Judges use subjective criteria to determine scores at cheer competitions, evaluating teams on ambiguous elements of their routines that go beyond technical proficiency.
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