In a school year unlike any before, it is understandable that Friday night high school football culture has changed in nearly all aspects.
Since the athletic department had to make changes in order to safely and properly comply with social distancing regulations, football games look drastically different. Generally during games, there are a handful of daring and exciting stunts performed by the cheerleading team in hopes of capturing the crowd’s attention for a split second. However, this year with COVID-19, there have been significantly less stunts performed by the team.
Starting in the summer of 2020, changes already started to occur for the varsity and JV cheerleading teams. One dramatic difference for the team involved the annual Fourth of July parade in Bettendorf. Unfortunately this year it was cancelled due to COVID-19. Additionally, the team was unable to attend their summer cheer camp in Cedar Rapids, IA.
Head coach of the cheer team, Megan Ramirez, had to adjust to several changes, such as adapting tryouts to a virtual format. “We had everyone submit their tryout video via Flipgrid. We weren’t allowed to practice this summer and get our summer workouts in,” Ramirez said. “We didn’t get to attend camp where we usually get a lot of choreography ideas.”
The late summer practices for the team were also altered due to COVID-19. The team had to practice outside on the track to help mandate social distancing guidelines and to have an open space for everyone to breathe freely. In order to condition this summer, the team had to split into two groups. One group worked with Ramirez, while the other group followed a workout on their own.
Although the aforementioned changes brought significant challenges for the team, the biggest adjustment for the team involved the stunting regulations set by the Iowa Cheer Coaches Association, commonly known as the ICCA. These regulations prohibited high school cheer teams from stunting–something vital to the sport. In the summer, no high school cheerleading teams in the state of Iowa were permitted to stunt, and that upset many team members because of how important it is to cheerleading.
Varsity cheerleader Savannah Ervin is coming to terms with the new regulations and what the changes mean for her senior season. “At first I was really sad because I thought we weren’t going to be able to stunt at all,” Ervin explained.
After a summer of no stunting and working on personal goals, the ICCA updated their stunting regulations to permit stunting with limitations on a school by school basis with permission from each school’s athletic director. Pleasant Valley’s athletic director, D’Anne Kroemer, decided to allow the cheerleading team to stunt according to the ICCA’s restrictions.
Many athletes on the team were excited to hear the news. “Now they said we can [stunt], and I am happy about that, but we can only do basic level stunts and there are lots of restrictions that I wish we didn’t have,” Ervin said, in reference to the ICCA’s update.
With permission to stunt, the ICCA has set explicit rules and regulations. Cheerleaders must wear masks when they are coming into any contact with each other. There are also specific stunts that will not be permitted this year: cradles, twist ups or twist downs, tosses or basket tosses, inversions, transitional stunts, pyramids and tumbling into stunts.
These restrictions have made it very difficult for the team to be creative in order to perform a variety of stunts. Each week, the team has to come up with different sequences involving stunts, jumps, cheers, and tumbling to perform in between quarters of the football game and during timeouts.
The restrictions have inflicted different reactions throughout the team. “The stunt restrictions that the ICCA has put out don’t exactly make sense to me,” explained Ervin.
Ramirez is also finding difficulties with coaching through the restrictions. “I’m finding it hard to prepare girls for their next step in college cheer without being able to teach them more elite stunts,” she described.
Through the darkness of COVID-19, there is some light. The team and Ramirez are all excited and hopeful for what lies in the future for this season. “I’m really looking forward to doing our victory cheer a lot, being able to try out for All-State and being a positive teammate,” Ervin shared.
Ramirez is also looking forward to some new and exciting things this season such as a new category for the state competition and to celebrate the seniors she has coached these past four years. “I’m just excited to have the rest of Friday night lights and to watch the fun these girls have cheering along with our student section and cheering the spartans on to more victories,” explained Ramirez.
Despite COVID-19, the Pleasant Valley cheerleading team’s determination through the virus has shown they will do their best with the situation at hand and hopefully enjoy what is left of football season. The team also looks forward to progressing their stunting skills as they get additional practice, learning how to work with one another and bonding as a team.
