Cheer News

Some might say Jessica Bugg Smith is doing everything wrong at her Danville, KY-based gym, Kentucky Reign All-Stars. Somehow though, things are going very right. Instead of going the group-classes-with-additional-private-coaching route, Kentucky Reign primarily offers one-on-one time with coaches, with all-star athletes practicing together as a group a couple of hours a week. It was a risky move, but one that has paid off. Since making the change in August, Kentucky Reign’s roster doubled within months.

“It has been amazing,” says Smith, a Danville native. “Our kids are getting more one-on-one attention, and we are able to get results faster that way.”

Because many of the gym’s athletes are in multiple extracurricular activities and come from busy large families, flexible scheduling works out in everyone’s favor. Their times can move weekly, depending on schedules and coaches’ availability. It is not uncommon for Smith to list those openings on Facebook in the middle of the night, and by morning, every hour is spoken for. “In our modern time, we have access to almost anything 24/7,” Smith says. “So we adapted the traditional model to work for modern parents.”

Plus, in a group class, a child may only get about seven minutes of one-on-one attention from his or her coach. With the gym’s new model, kids are getting results quicker and learning new skills more rapidly—and that’s what is bringing in new faces. And for all-star newbies, individual lessons are less intimidating, she adds.

Yet Smith acknowledges that this sort of business model wouldn’t work for all gym owners. After all, it took her a while to find the right formula. Smith first struck out on her own after moving back to Danville upon giving up on a career in finance after the financial crash of 2008. With a supportive husband, $30 and fond memories of her years coaching cheer while putting herself through college, Smith set out on her new path.

She began by renting space at the local Salvation Army and offering tumbling classes. It wasn’t long before she needed her own gym, so Smith rented a sparse room 30 minutes away in Nicholasville, a busier suburb of Lexington. “It looked like Shrek lived there,” she jokes about the gym’s humble beginnings.

When it came time to move into bigger digs again, she struggled with what direction to go in, literally. Her head told her to stay in Nicholasville, which has a population of 30,000 compared to Danville’s 16,000. But her heart wanted to be back home, working within the community she has so much pride for because of places like Centre College, which hosted vice-presidential debates twice during the last decade. Her beloved small town is also home to the annual Kentucky State BBQ Festival and a place that Money magazine rates as one of the best retirement destinations in the U.S.

With a tie score between her head and heart, Smith made a conscious decision to wait for a sign. It happened at a local burger joint, like so many things do in small-town America. A former student who Smith had not seen for at least a year approached her and asked why Smith’s classes had to be all the way in Nicholasville.

And although Smith could think of a few reasons, like how others in the industry assured her she could do better in a bigger city, she knew that would not resonate with the little girl staring at her over French fries. Smith decided right there and then that reconnecting with her own community and the kids growing up there–offering a smaller, unique opportunity closer to home–was what she should do.

But even with the level of enthusiasm her All-Star athletes have for competitive cheer, Danville is not a competitive cheer town like many Kentucky locales. Football is the “Friday Night Lights”-style main event. Everything revolves around pigskin. And inadvertently, Kentucky Reign All-Stars has become part of that rotation with football players seeking out the gym’s coaches for conditioning and cross-training. Many players report improvement on the field thanks to their cheer conditioning, bringing more males through the doors.

As Kentucky Reign’s emerging business model began to present itself due to demand, Smith began taking notes on Courtney Smith-Pope’s success at Cheer Extreme. “They have been an inspiration,” Smith says. “They were pioneers who showed that (All Stars) can be done in a small area.”

Trusting her instincts, Smith decided to go the private-lesson model almost completely at that point, dropping recreational classes and open gym hours in response to demand. The focus shifted solely to intense training for competition and preparing athletes for college cheer teams (as well as helping them acquire funds and scholarships to pursue their degrees in the process).

The key to the gym’s success, according to Smith? Adaptability. As her clientele’s needs change, her gym changes—even the name when it didn’t fit the gym’s personality anymore. Change is always a gamble, Smith acknowledges. But paraphrasing Kenny Rogers, the world’s favorite gambler, she says the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away, even if it’s what works for everyone else.

The shift was a boon for her coaches, who began to make their own schedules and thereby set their own salaries, paying a small percentage of the tuition to Kentucky Reign. The gym, which has little overhead thanks to its no-frills, high-functioning facility (read: small, sparse, succinct) covers bills mostly through all-star tuition. Since the area’s median household income is around $38,000, coaches work closely with parents to help offset those costs through fundraisers.

At the core, Smith’s business philosophy echoes that of her mentor, Pride Cheer Metro St. Louis’ David Briggs. Here’s how she sums it up: “It is my and my coaches’ jobs to find a way to make our kids successful on their terms,” Smith says. Whether it’s by accommodating their schedules or helping them pay their way, she wants to keep the sport accessible for everyone.

Briggs also instilled in Smith that there is no success without successors: “He mentored me and now I mentor others.”

Part of that mentoring for Smith is matchmaking. Within the gym, a two-tiered, family-style system exists to sustain the feeling of unity, even with more one-on-one coaching hours logged. Each of the older students is assigned a “Little” during a ceremony, which in turn determines what family they are a part of. “It’s a big deal,” Smith says. “There is a lot of thought put into it. It creates a very good system and teaches older ones how to lead others. That is something they will need to do later in life.” And Smith is just the person to lead the way.

–Arrissia Owen

Hannah is a typical 15-year-old cheerleader. She spends eight hours a day at school, comes home to do her homework and then heads to the gym for cheer practice. With exhaustion setting in, she picks up an energy drink on the way to give the boost she needs to get through the grueling schedule of stretching, stunts, tumbling and dance. Sound familiar? It’s a common practice with many athletes—and cheer professionals, too.

But do energy drinks even work?

Stephanie Beveridge, wellness coach and owner of GymKix in Texas, says that they do, at least temporarily. “They pump your body full of sugar and tell your body to start producing insulin,” says Beveridge. “It’s almost like if your ‘check engine’ light is on, and you take it to get fixed and your mechanic turns the light off. But did it fix the problem?”

Even more concerning are the adverse health effects energy drinks can have. Beveridge cautions that they often contain harmful artificial colors like Red 5 (which can lead to hyperactivity) and artificial sugars that are carcinogens and neurotoxins: “Artificial sweeteners and colors cause headaches, joint issues, inflammation—all the things we’re trying to fix in our athletes. It’s counterproductive.”

In 2014, the World Health Organization published a study calling for more restrictions on the sale of energy drinks to young people. In particular, it highlighted some of the dangers of using energy drinks before or during sports practice—despite the fact that energy drinks are often marketed specifically as enhancing athletic performance. In a worst-case scenario, energy drinks can trigger heart problems even in healthy teenagers (according to cardiologist Dr. Fabian Sanchis-Gomar).

And the best-case scenario? According to a January 2013 article published in The New York Times, it’s that the drinks are completely ineffectual. “The energy drink industry,” researchers conclude, “is based on a brew of ingredients that, apart from caffeine, have little, if any benefit for consumers.”

So if the energy drink won’t help Hannah perk up for her cheerleading practice—and might even harm her—what should she do instead?

Beveridge swears by water with a drop or two of essential oils. “They’re therapeutic and detoxifying to organs. They produce energy from the inside out,” she says. “We use plants from the indigenous area, so they have the most potency.”

Another option is pure coconut water, which has been touted by top athletes and health experts as a healthier, more hydrating option. It has been found to be just as nourishing as a sports drink but creates less nausea or feeling of fullness. Sports nutritionist Nancy Clark just urges athletes to be smart about replenishing calories for longer workouts, too. “Supplement with a quick source of energy, like a banana or some raisins and a handful of pretzels, to provide nutrients to replenish your stores,” she recommended in a WebMD article.

A young athlete like Hannah has better options than energy drinks for those long practices, and coaches and parents can play a crucial role in helping her to make those healthier choices. “It’s really about wellness education,” Beveridge says of the biggest impact coaches can make on their athletes, “because they don’t realize how harmful energy drinks are to young bodies.”

–Alicia Thompson

When most cheerleading coaches decide to open their own gyms, they do it for love of the sport, a desire to make a difference with young athletes, a competitive drive to be the best. They don’t do it because they love chasing down accounts every month, but that’s exactly what they’ll have to do if they want their gym to stay open.

“One gym called us for advice and was $100,000 in the hole,” says Tanya Roesel, owner of Midwest Cheer Elite. “And I was like, how did you get there? People will pay what they have to pay for. If you let them think they’re at the bottom of the ladder, they will treat you like that.”

There are many different programs or apps available to make invoicing efficient and painless, and the trick is finding the one that works best for your gym. Kristina McDaniel, owner of NC-based Fury Elite Allstars, recommends Square because it “works best and is super easy.”As for Roesel, she takes a unique approach: after using a parent-created program for a long time, she is now launching a custom-made billing program that resulted from a year-long process consulting with Apple. For her, the key was to think about what technologies parents and coaches were most comfortable with using—in this case, iPhones and iPads.

Heather Crowe-Clark of New York Icons prefers to keep things classic. “I personally absolutely love QuickBooks,” she says. “I have recurring templates set up for every month.”

Staying on top of regular billing is hard enough when everything runs like clockwork, but the reality is that you’re always going to have some parents who don’t pay on time. Roesel has a general e-mail that she sends to anyone who’s delinquent to make arrangements for payment, and then she distributes a list to her coaches of who needs to sit out practice until the fees are paid. “It’s like a utility bill,” she says. “You get a late notice, and then services stop.”

If you are going to assess a late fee, she suggests making it high enough that a parent would balk at it, like 50 dollars as opposed to ten. “If there are eighteen kids on that sit list at the start of the week,” she says, “by Friday there will be zero.”

Sometimes it’s necessary to have a conversation with a parent about the delinquency. Crowe-Clarke thinks that’s the reason some gym owners don’t want to deal with collections—because they don’t want to have that potentially confrontational phone call. “But you’re going to lose that parent anyway,” she points out, “because they’re not going to be able to catch up.”

She says what helps her is to level with parents and explain the various competition fees, equipment charges and uniform costs she has to pay. Helping them understand the money going out reinforces the importance of the money coming in.

Most gym owners hope to never have to escalate collections to the level of involving an attorney or initiating a case in small claims court. But Roesel says that she’s brought several such cases in front of a magistrate, and it’s taught her a lot. “We work really closely with our judge so that our document that parents sign is approved by the judge,” she says.

She’s also learned not to release merchandise to a parent unless it’s been fully paid for. “When you go to court, you bring the merchandise with you, so that the judge can see that you did have to purchase the merchandise and couldn’t cancel the order,” Roesel says. When merchandise is released and payment never received, the charges could go from civil to criminal, because at that point, it’s theft by deception.

What’s clear is that the best way to stay out of court—and keep the money flowing in your gym—is to be proactive with parents. Auto-debit is one strategy that makes payment more convenient for parents and more assured for a gym owner. Crowe-Clark has had success with auto-debit, and she also works with her families to create different options where they can pay weekly, monthly or in a lump sum as might be convenient. For families who are more financially needy, she says, she’s worked out discounts on tuition in exchange for help with cleaning the gym, assisting or junior coaching. “I’m never going to let a kid not cheer for my gym because they can’t afford it,” she says.

–Alicia Thompson

Imagine this scenario: you shell out thousands to hire a highly recommended choreographer to come into your gym and teach your squad a new routine. Your athletes show up, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to learn an array of skills to show off at their upcoming competition. But mere minutes into rehearsal, it’s clear that the choreographer is distracted and high on an illegal substance. You immediately send him home in a cab—now weeks away from competing with absolutely nothing prepared.

The above scenario happened to Cheer Savannah’s Stephanie Britt, and sadly, the incident is not an isolated one. As drug-related episodes like this continue to permeate the all-star cheer community, gym owners are calling for something to be done about it.

“Using drugs both on or off of the job is completely unacceptable,” says ACX Cheer’s Randy Dickey. “I personally feel that if you work with children, you should not be under the influence of chemical substances whatsoever. A coach is more than a coach. A coach is a life coach. You shape these kids and develop their habits. If you can’t get your own life together, I just don’t feel that you can really be a role model for these kids.”

Britt agrees. She argues that the industry has made recent moves towards taking on a more conservative approach to competitions, so why shouldn’t eliminating drugs should be an equal part of that priority? “We are going to long uniforms because they don’t want the sport to seem promiscuous. They are going towards the dance moves being a lot more conservative and less makeup, because they think that is the reason a lot of people don’t want to sign their daughters up,” she explains. “Well I’m thinking, ‘Maybe we should clean up the adults, clean up the people that mentor the kids!’”

A Call to Action

Many gym owners, like AIM Athletics’ Dia Muhammad would love to see the USASF take action. “USASF should mandate drug testing for all professional members,” she explains. “We have taken an excellent step in requiring background checks. Drug screenings are definitely the next step in ensuring the safety to the children, our growing industry, and gym owners nationwide. If USASF does begin mandating drug screenings, I do believe we will witness a ‘cleanup’ in our industry.”

Dickey seconds this notion, mentioning that he has witnessed too many professionals operating under the influence around his athletes and that the sport’s governing body should be in charge of supervising that. “Some people debate if that’s the USASF’s place or not. I made a post in the ASGA and I had some instructors tell me that they didn’t feel like it was the USASF’s job to do that—and if they wanted to hire someone, that was their choice. But I was like, ‘That’s not the way it works.’ That’s not the gym owner’s decision; there should be somebody there to be the liaison to make sure that the right professional is there in front of the kids.”

Putting Policies in Place

Many programs, like AIM Athletics, have very clear-cut rules about drugs and on-site alcohol usage spelled out in their employee paperwork. In the case of a reported usage, Muhammad says her gym would immediately terminate an offender. Britt would do the same, but Dickey says he might initially opt for less drastic steps, depending on the severity of the situation.

“We have a chaplain who is with the Fellowship of Christian Athletics that comes to our staff meetings every Tuesday night,” he reveals. “If I found out somebody was doing drugs, I would definitely point them towards him and hope that they would take the proper steps to rectify themselves.” Regardless of their outlook, all three gym owners agree that programs should have a firm anti-drug plan of attack in place.

A United Front

Cheer program owners have started to band together in the fight against hiring staff members that have a past history of using drugs. When Britt encountered her unruly choreographer situation, for instance, she immediately hopped on ASGA’s Facebook page and posted the following alert: “I highly discourage gym owners and my peers from using choreographers with a history of drug abuse, whether they have had rehab or not, because you never know what you are going to get.”

Following her remarks, Britt was immediately bombarded by messages from fellow gym owners with similar experiences. She encourages her colleagues to openly share stories of past offenders in an attempt to keep child athletes safe from being around these drug offenders. And since there is nothing currently mandated by USASF, many industry professionals see this methodology as the best way to ensure they end up hiring reputable and drug-free staff members.

“Because there is no governing body rule that will blackball [offenders] from the industry, they can go right up the street and work at your competitor,” says Dickey.

Britt says that one of her colleagues even went so far as to start circulating a list of choreographers and having fellow gym owners rate experiences associated with using them. “If they don’t do a good job, put their name out there and we’ll blackball them,” says Britt. “It’s all about word of mouth.”

According to many gyms, drug use within the all-star cheer community continues to be a problem—but that hasn’t stopped programs from doing their part to halt the issue. And with voices being raised across the community, many see it as only a matter of time before USASF steps in and takes action.

“I take this job very seriously. I want this industry to be taken seriously, and we are never going to get there if we don’t curb some of the ‘wild, wild West’ antics that we have going on in our industry,” explains Dickey. “They need to go away.”

–Nicole Pajer

Imagine a pyramid of cheerleaders that morphs into a human poker player dealing blackjack, Las Vegas-style. How about a pyramid of cheerleaders whose uniforms suddenly transform into hockey jerseys in a straight up homage to a hip-hop dance crew, or an all Lady Gaga-themed routine?

Luckily, cheer fans don’t have to imagine such curious and jaw-dropping spectacles. Jamie Parrish makes them happen.

“We had seven girls in the air—three became the table and one dealer,” says Parrish of the quasi gambling-themed routine for the California All Stars Aces. These and other memorable routines have solidified Parrish’s spot in the choreography history books. And his exacting schedule proves it.

“I’m booked for summer 2016,” says Parrish, 44, who choreographs full competition routines that include skill assessment, stunts, pyramids, dance grooves and, of course, the out-of-the-box ideas that have teams in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Nevada, California and elsewhere coming back to him repeatedly. The cost? $3,500.

Always “44 eight-counts from beginning to end,” Parrish’s routines are often inspired by off-season travels to acrobatic competitions in Europe and Cirque du Soleil performances. Otherwise, Parrish calls on his many years as an Atlanta gym owner to develop routines that athletes will nail—every time. While some choreographers expect “the tumbling or talent fairy to show up in a month’s time,” Parrish takes a realistic approach to working with teams. Says Parrish, “I’m not going to create a routine that I hope the cheerleaders will hit.”

His motivation is simple: “I don’t want anyone to fail. It’s not good for business.”

And it’s not just all-star cheerleaders lucky enough to sweat out the fruits of Parrish’s labor, although gyms do account for about 50 percent of his clientele. High schools, colleges including Boston University, TV shows like “Vampire Diaries,” MTV and Universal Dance Association have all enlisted services from Parrish.

Not bad for a former University of South Carolina cheerleader. But long before college cheerleading took hold, Parrish was turning cartwheels and dancing through the fields on the Ty Ty, Georgia peanut farm where he grew up. “I was the Billy Elliot of South Georgia,” says Parrish. “My creative IQ is pretty high.”

And while he had every opportunity to fuel his dance and imagination outlet, many children aren’t so lucky. Reading about cuts to many school arts programs saddens Parrish. That’s why he lends his skills no charge to a few area high schools—in the hopes that the next fashion designer or Broadway play performer will uncover his or her creative muse.

Harnessing creativity is also why, in April 2014, Parrish sold his successful Atlanta gym, Georgia Allstars, to embark on a full-time choreography business. “My coaching career ran its course,” says Parrish, who had grown weary of the all-too frequent gym hopping among athletes hoping for nothing more than a coveted spot on a Worlds team. Those who bounce among high-profile gyms are missing out and burning out, says Parrish, on the less tangible but hugely important benefits of being part of a team long-term. “[They’re] all Worlds and winning,” he says.

He adds that dancing has taken a backseat when it comes to all-star routines, eliminating a lot of opportunities for athletes who may not be the strongest tumblers or stunters but who contribute to the overall routine on a different plane.

So Parrish is putting more energy into pursuing his other passion, a creative think tank of sorts called Bold & Dash. The company offers various marketing services (including choreography, of course); one event in New York City included 300 dancers and 100 life-size lizards. Bold & Dash also provides insight into two powerful groups that Parrish knows intimately: teens and millennial moms. After all, spending hundreds of hours the last two decades working with cheerleaders and their mothers is practically a study in anthropology. Cheerleaders are influential in terms of what they wear, drink, eat and Tweet about, and Parrish knows this. Fortune 500 clients want their attention—and Parrish knows how to get it.

“Reaching the female market requires finesse,” says Parrish.

But at the end of the day, there’s one thing that keeps Parrish—once voted ESPN The Magazine’s Top Cheer Choreographer—going, and that’s working with teams to help them succeed.

“Cheerleading is in my heart,” he says.

–Molly Blake