As a cheerleading coach, Macy Bump saw talented high schoolers having to end their athletic careers after graduation.
Despite the students having the athletic ability to cheer, they were attending technical colleges, and none in the state offered a competitive cheer program. As someone who attended technical college herself, Bump wished there was a low commitment, low cost option for more students.
“I felt that making a program that fit the lives of technical college students would really draw them in and make a difference,” Bump told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
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So she turned to Chippewa Valley Technical College, known as CVTC, where she took classes in 2019. Although the school had an esports team — competitive video games — and intramural football, there was no traditional athletic department.
They had to build a handbook and figure out class and grade requirements.
“There just wasn’t really groundwork laid yet for what athletics looked like,” Erin Hazen, CVTC student clubs and leadership coordinator, told WPR.
Working with Hazen, Bump was able to launch a competitive cheer squad last year. It is CVTC’s first such team and one of a kind in the state, as no other technical college has a competitive cheer team. On the day of tryouts in the fall, more students showed up than there were available spots.
The CVTC cheer team boasts 11 athletes and a mascot: Ollie the River Otter, the school’s first mascot in four decades.
They had their initial practice in September and three months later won first place at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire’s Fire Up Cheerleading Competition.
First-year nursing student Izzy Kaeding of Eau Claire is the cheer captain for the team. She is also the “flyer,” meaning she gets thrown in the air and caught by the rest of her teammates.
“We walk in and most of us are strangers,” she said. “But you’ve got to build connections. You’ve got to make those friends before you are thrown and caught by them because it is a lot of trust that you need.”
Kaeding said competitive cheer is different from sideline cheer, which is when cheerleaders are at a football or basketball game to amp up the crowd and support the players. In competitive cheerleading, athletes perform acrobatic routines in front of judges — think human pyramids, tumbling, choreography and stunts.
She said the team feels very inclusive, as well as developmental. Some of the athletes had never cheered prior to joining the team.
“We are such a team sport that we’re all going to build each other up and we’re going to help everybody get the skills needed. You’ll have people that walk in with skills and that’s great, but even if they don’t, it doesn’t really matter because they’re going to learn,” Kaeding said.
Their next exhibition is on Saturday, Jan. 17, at Greendale High School. And the team is preparing for a potential routine at the National Cheerleaders Association & National Dance Alliance Collegiate Cheer and Dance Championship in April in Daytona Beach, Florida.
