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Jan 29, 2011
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I was just interested in how gyms-big and small- are viewed in their towns. I live in the DMV area so before worlds they went to Cheertyme and had a segment and acknowledged all teams competing at Worlds. One radio station always congratulates Twisters, Crimson Heat and Dream because the daughter of one of the Dj's cheers for Dream. So cheer gyms here have a pressence in the area, what about everywhere else?
 
Nobody really acknowledges cheerleading in the media where I'm from.. Whenever people at my school (for whatever reason) talk about competitive cheer, they at least know my gym's name! so there is always that.. But they still have no idea about the cheer world..
 
In my 8 years of experience, I've determined that while the cheer world is large and incredibly detailed..it's also incredibly "small" to the outside world.

Nothing drives that home more than driving through the tiny town of Kernersville, NC and expecting the "welcome to the city" signs to be teal, or reference the home of multiple titled world champs, or have some big "X marks the spot" on Gralin Street, only to have the town not have a single clue who/what CEA is unless its printed on the side of a race car. Tell me I'm wrong @mstealtoyou!


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In my 8 years of experience, I've determined that while the cheer world is large and incredibly detailed..it's also incredibly "small" to the outside world.

Nothing drives that home more than driving through the tiny town of Kernersville, NC and expecting the "welcome to the city" signs to be teal, or reference the home of multiple titled world champs, or have some big "X marks the spot" on Gralin Street, only to have the town not have a single clue who/what CEA is unless its printed on the side of a race car. Tell me I'm wrong @mstealtoyou!


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You couldn't be more right! Kevin Harvick truck racing is right across the street from us though. So if you tell folks that's where your kids gym is they'll know.
 
In my 8 years of experience, I've determined that while the cheer world is large and incredibly detailed..it's also incredibly "small" to the outside world.

Nothing drives that home more than driving through the tiny town of Kernersville, NC and expecting the "welcome to the city" signs to be teal, or reference the home of multiple titled world champs, or have some big "X marks the spot" on Gralin Street, only to have the town not have a single clue who/what CEA is unless its printed on the side of a race car. Tell me I'm wrong @mstealtoyou!


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I've definitely noticed this when talking to people about the fact that we commute for cheer. People are like "You drive HOW FAR for cheerleading?" Trying to explain to them that it's not just any cheerleading, but the world famous CEA is wasted breath. They just don't get it. Even CP's Dad (I'm remarried) says he doesn't care how great they are, he's not having anything to do with taking her back/forth. Luckily, DH doesn't feel that way and is supportive and willing to share the drive.
 
Maybe because the DC metro area is so small, in the sense that everyone knows about what goes on in the area and news reaches over three areas a successful program will get some media attention.

Not to mention athletes are spread around the area and go to school with kids who cheer at other programs and other students kind of get it. Anyone who has the minmal knowledge about cheer knows how great Twisters are.
 
when I was a wee little one on pop warner, the local newspapers would always post a 2 page spread for states/regionals/nationals and do a small piece on the winners if they were local. there were usually at least a couple color photo pages... but i'm not even sure they do that anymore (though i haven't subscribed to a newspaper in quite some time)

of course that WC Twinkles piece was in local papers, but i've never seen comps or national/world results mentioned.
 
In my area, cheer is a huge thing. My county in California has one of the largest cheer populations in the country. Almost evey high school competes, and a large amount of those girls co-compete on Allstar. When it comes to the larger gyms, they're predominantly heard of due to publicity.
 
Nobody outside of cheer really knows what allstar cheer is but most kids in my area or at my school can identify us by our calf or arm muscles lol. The kids, even the slightly ignorant ones, pretty much recognize competitive cheer as a sport. Most of the kids at my school only know of one gym because that's where all the cheerleaders in the county go so if I tell them I cheer they automatically think I cheer there lol.
 
We have three gyms in my town and the biggest has 50 kids. So there aren't many of us and they're spread across all age groups. People don't know anything about cheer. Some of them know where my gym is, if only because they drive past it every day to get to school, or I've had them drop me off. My own sister still doesn't know which turn leads to the gym :oops:
It's not big here at all, really only cheerleaders know about it, or my friends, but they don't respect it. People don't even bother trying to understand. I kind of wish I lived somewhere where cheer was bigger! My parents considered moving to Atlanta when we moved but instead... we end up here. THERE'S AMAZING CHEER IN ATLANTA WHY MOM WHY
 
There's a gym 5 minutes from my house that started very small and is now growing. Their highest level team is now senior 4. When people in our area hear my daughter does competition cheer but doesn't cheer for that gym, they usually ask if she's not good enough to be on their teams. Lol. They are a good gym and growing, but over the years, whatever their highest level team was, CP was always a level or two higher. It gets awkward because I certainly don't want to put them down and it's hard to say that she's "better" (for lack of a better word) than their teams. Our gym
is an hour from our house and people can't understand why we go there when the other gym is right here.


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My high school team always makes it into the local paper and gets news channel recognition before nationals. My all star team had a small feature segment after we won U.S. Finals and had all of us getting off of the plane as well as an interview with our coaches!
 
In my hometown, the two youth activity programs that do well on a provincial and/or national level are hockey (Canada...) and cheerleading, so my old gym was definitely in the local papers several times. If it's not in the physical newspaper, there's at least an article on the paper's website every Nationals and usually at provincials and Worlds too. Also, since there were around 600 athletes at my old gym when I left, but the city's not very big, pretty much every classroom in town has at least 1 cheerleader in it so it's definitely pretty well known!
 
I remember a few years ago, I was talking to @mstealtoyou and she couldn't believe that people in Freehold (or in the state in general) didn't know WC. I tried to explain how big Freehold was (township, not borough). Add that to the fact, if you aren't in the sport, the outside world generally doesn't care...until they do.
 
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