A cheerleading team from KU competed at the university national cheerleading competition, coming third.
The level two cougars team (Golds) were up against 11 other teams from across the country.
“Cheer is an amazing sport that has pushed me physically and mentally,” commented Kingston University student Sophia Ramos.
She continued: “I love the competitive element of cheer as it allows us to compete for the biggest trophies in university cheer.”
Cheerleading is a sport that is a combination of stunts, jumps, dance and tumbling. Each team competes in different levels ranging between one to seven.
The harder the difficulty in stunts and tumbling the higher the division level the university team will compete in.
The level one team, Blues, faced a setback when their teammate Leeanshu was sick on-stage mid performance.
Leeanshu stated that she “felt sick the whole performance” and was “sweating way more than usual”, but decide to brush past it so she could compete.
She added: “I felt kind of embarrassed, I just started crying as I thought I ruined the whole routine for everyone, so I started to have a panic attack.”
This resulted in the performance being stopped and the team redoing their performance again to allow to team to have a fair chance of competing within their decision.
The only difference was that they were only going to be marked on their second run from when the music stopped.
Balsam Maki
James Woodham
Dharmi Dave