Randy Dickey of Columbia, SC-based ACX Cheer thought so highly of Kyle Wright that after cheering for ACX, Randy asked Kyle to run his gym in Charleston. “Athlete, coach, gym manager, Kyle does it all,” says Dickey of Wright’s work today.
Like many other cheer professionals, Wright was initially a gymnast. When asked to cheer in high school, he was hesitant at first but finally gave in because, “I figured there would be girls there.”
26-year-old Megan Carmean, aka “Carmeano,” considers herself an “in-betweener” because she was able to experience the evolution of the all-star world from the time she first began her cheer career at age 10 at Omaha, NE-based Elite Cheer to now. While competing as an athlete, Carmean also played the role of assistant coach in many of the national championships the team won. Since 2006, Carmean has been Elite Cheer’s Head Coach, Safety Coordinator and Youth Program Director (all while holding down a full-time job as a nurse).
We received the following email in our inbox from a 13-year-old aspiring all-star cheerleader and enlisted program director/coach Tara Wieland of Michigan Storm Cheer & Dance to share her insights and advice.
Question: Hi, I am a 13-year-old and I love the concept of cheerleading and would love to cheer myself. So can I still be on an all-star team even though I am not be able to tumble and be super flexible?
Most people don’t equate cheerleading with computer science, but global systems engineer and former all-star athlete Ambrel Mitchell Brannon has successfully been able to juggle all the above. Currently a coach at Cheer Athletics, Brannon completed a Masters degree in computer science at Southern Methodist University while coaching several teams and competing on an open coed team. Now retired, she works her day job as an engineer and spends her nights and weekends coaching at Cheer Athletics.
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