Cheer News

You may know Tanya Roesel as the determined entrepreneur behind the Midwest Cheer Elite empire, but long before her all-star cheer days, she first made a name for herself as a deejay—spinning at Cincinnati nightclubs and eventually opening for major acts like Prince back in the 80s. The road to notability, however, wasn’t exactly smooth: as the only female DJ in town, she was often told she couldn’t succeed because she was a woman. “I love when people tell me I can’t do something because it just makes me want to do it more,” she says.

Roesel took the adversity and spun it into a specialized personal business, finding out what her clients were trying to sell and nailing the kind of demographic they wanted to bring in at large parties. “I loved the challenge of ‘How big can we make this event?’” she says.

Roesel came away from those early gigs with a finely tuned business sense and insider knowledge of the effect music has on human psychology. After spending three years commanding the turntables, she went on to coach high school color guard and rifle teams; in 2000, she was coaxed into coaching her first competitive cheerleading squad—despite never having cheered a day in her life.

Flash forward 14 years, and her gym Midwest Cheer Elite has nearly 500 all-stars, three gyms in Ohio and a brand-new location in Fort Myers, Florida, which went from zero to 300 athletes in four months. Back in Ohio, she is planning to build a bigger gym in Westchester (which has outgrown its original facility) and open three more gyms: a fourth in Ohio, and two more outside the state.

Roesel attributes the rapid growth of Midwest Cheer Elite to an empowered staff that helps each other, attends weekly meetings and is required to know the name of every single child in the gym within 30 days. She strongly believes that personal touch translates to repeat business. “I know my customers, treat them right and, because of that, all I hear is, ‘It’s different, it’s like a family,’” she says.

That said, marketing is also a key part of Roesel’s success strategy. To make Midwest Cheer Elite a household name, she blankets her towns with fliers, posting them everywhere from Kroger’s supermarkets to malls or handing them out the old-fashioned way. One of her tongue-in-cheek mottos: “If it breathes and walks, it gets a flier.”

At the new Florida location, the marketing strategy went beyond paper. The staff built a “haunted” maze out of hay in the gym as part of a fall festival, which created excitement among both the parents and the kids. “When people take a Friday night off and they want to be at the gym, then you know it’s a good thing,” Roesel says.

Roesel’s expertise has become so coveted that she has forged a new career as a consultant, traveling to gyms across the continent to help them course-correct if they’re having difficulty staying in the black. Recently, she met with Panther Cheer Athletics in Canada, where she troubleshot their problems with both their facility and their niche—encouraging them to move into a smaller space that felt more intimate compared to their current tiny slice of a giant stadium and to adopt hip-hop, which no other gym in the area was offering.

Though the advice Roesel doles out to her clients is highly tailored, she has encountered a few common mistakes that many gym owners make. Her top tips on how to avoid them:

Offer plenty of options for parents. Midwest Cheer Elite offers everything from $1 tumbling for an hour on Thursday nights to $175 summer season passes to pricy full-travel packages. If a parent questions how expensive a product is, Roesel offers them a half-season or a single class to bring in customers on all ends of the spectrum. According to Roesel, this approach mitigates unpaid bills and brings in referrals.

Think with your head, not your heart. Don’t let parents avoid paying their bills, Roesel advises. One ways she keeps payments coming in is averaging the services for the entire year and sending monthly bills for the same amount. “You’ve got to keep it simple for the parents, and [your services] have to be budget-able,” she says.

Empower your employees to speak up. Make your office a safe space for staff to feel comfortable talking to you about what’s working and what’s not working in your area. Bottom line: hearing their candid feedback and ideas will increase business and profits.

Embrace competition. If another gym opens up on your turf, look at it as an opportunity rather than a stressor. “I love competition. I love other gyms opening up, because it makes me stop and reevaluate my product,” Roesel says. “What are they doing that we’re not doing?”

Choose music the judges will love. Millennials may dig Miley Cyrus, but nostalgia could work in your favor with 30-something judges, Roesel says. One of her senior co-ed squads recently used “Take Your Time (Do It Right)” by the S.O.S. Band, a tune that topped the charts in 1980. “I always tell my coaches, ‘Get in the heads of your judges,’” she says.

For cheer professionals looking to carve their own niche in the industry, Roesel’s advice is straightforward: “Find out the need and how you can sell that need.” That’s exactly what Roesel herself did, first in her DJ days and now as an all-star cheer expert. “Before I was doing the consulting, I saw that people didn’t know how to run their business,” she shares. “They got into it for the right reasons, but at the end of the day, gyms were shutting down because no one knew how to be a business person.”

Her other guiding motto? When you’ve come up with that big idea, act on it—fast. Otherwise, it’ll become stale and you’ll be seen as a follower, not a leader. “Sometimes you just have to take the risk and execute it as fast as you can, and then figure out what to fix,” she says. And if Roesel’s success is any indication, being a risk-taker pays off in spades.

Randy Dickey of Columbia, SC-based ACX Cheer thought so highly of Kyle Wright that after his stint cheering for ACX, Dickey asked Wright 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.” Once Wright began training at ACX, he got hooked. He had always been interested in coaching even while competing and started bugging Dickey to let him give it a try. To gain experience, Wright started teaching tumbling classes at summer camps and eventually landed a coaching position at the gym, going full-time after graduating from college.

Wright says he learned much of his coaching techniques from watching his own teachers—having insight into team dynamics is what he sees as one of his greatest strengths. Having been in his athletes’ shoes, Wright knows that resolving team issues is a large part of a coach’s job description. As such, he relies heavily on team-building exercises and uses them to help make the program more successful. ACX Charleston is a relatively new gym, and Wright’s goal is to have their first team ready for Worlds in 2015. However, day-to-day goals are just as important: “At the end of the day, I want my customers to feel good about themselves. And sometimes that may mean that even though they couldn’t get a certain skill that day that they go home with a goal for tomorrow and feel positive.”

This December, we’re running a series of spotlights on athletes-turned-cheer professionals. Meet Megan Carmean of Elite Cheer!

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).

“Having the experience of previously being an all-star cheerleader helps significantly in my day-to-day coaching,” says Carmean. “I feel it helps me relate to the current athletes in a unique manner. I understand the parts of practice they dread and the parts they love.”

Carmean uses her own experience to explain why the “boring” stuff is just as necessary as the “fun” parts of practice. She can also relate to the kids when it comes to time management: “I missed many school activities and birthday parties for practices and competitions, but when I can explain to the girls that it was worth it, it helps them cope.”

As a veteran who still remembers competing on a college cheer blue floor instead of the standard spring floor of today, Carmean looks forward to the day that the athleticism of all-star cheerleading is fully recognized as a sport and receives the respect it deserves.

–Vicky Choy

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:

Q: 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? I am super-strong and spirited—and I was wondering if that is enough. Can you please help me? Cheerleading is my dream and passion, and I don’t want to give it all up for not being “extreme enough.”

Tara Wieland: From someone who has been coaching a very long time, I wish kids like you grew on trees! Physical talent can be taught, but the drive, inner passion and self commitment cannot. I’d have to say you’re already much further ahead than some elite level athletes in our industry. If cheer is what you love, go for it! Keep that drive alive in every practice to push yourself further than you ever thought was possible. The cheer world in general needs more kids like you. Good luck and dream big!

This December, we’re running a series of spotlights on athletes-turned-cheer professionals. Meet Ambrel Mitchell of Cheer Athletics!

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 the famed Cheer Athletics gym in Dallas, 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. (It’s a good thing that Brannon’s husband also coaches at the gym—otherwise, they might never see each other!)

“You choose what you spend your time on,” says Brannon. “To me, coaching isn’t a job, it’s a passion, so I love being at the gym.”

Brannon credits her time management skills to her background as a competitive cheerleader. She started gymnastics at the age of six and, after moving into cheerleading, has never looked back. Brannon also has the distinction of being the only athlete that has competed at all 10 Worlds championships (when she started, cross-competing was still allowed). Having medaled every year she competed, Brannon cites one of her best memories as winning two gold medals at Worlds when she was 18. “I had to skip prom but it was worth it,” she shares.

These are the kinds of experiences Brannon now shares with her CA athletes. Since she can relate to most of the feelings the kids have, she knows how to advise them—consoling them when they feel defeat and teaching them what true winning can be. “Defeat is always a learning moment and every athlete should experience it to really appreciate success. I tell my students to not focus on winning but to aim for hitting routines you can be proud of. To me, that’s true winning.”

–Vicky Choy