Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Bisons best cheerleaders
Bisons win International Sea to the Sky Cheerleading Championships for second straight year. (HANDOUT PHOTO)
RAH, RAH, RAH! SIS BOOM BAH!
If that decades-old ditty is what you remember about cheerleading, get with it. And no one can help you understand more what 21st-century cheering is all about than the University of Manitoba Bisons squad under coaches Nadia El-Gabalawy and Carrie Robson.
For the second consecutive year, the 23-member crew won first place at the International Sea to the Sky Cheerleading Championships in Vancouver, being named grand champions during a season in which they were never beaten at a cheerleading competitive event.
"I think last year we went in very confident and feeling our team was really, really strong, and this year, we thought we basically had a brand-new team of athletes with no experience," said El-Gabalawy, adding that Simon Fraser University, ranked No. 3 in Canada, was a particularly scary opponent.
"So we went in thinking we really had to be perfect if we were going to pull this off."
As it turns out, they virtually were perfect. While the U of M's team is composed of 20 women and three men, Simon Fraser's is larger, with more than four men, so it should have been in a different coed division, but for this competition, it wasn't.
The Bisons bunch beat them anyway. And the University of British Columbia. And in a separate group-stunt competition, the Bisons placed first and third going up against a total of five teams from Calgary, Winnipeg and other places.
El-Gabalawy and Robson are former U of M cheerleaders, but El-Gabalawy also has an extensive background in gymnastics, which she brought to the program about two years ago.
The 2 1/2-minute main routine is non-stop action that includes throws, "basket tosses" of girls high in the air, dancing, pyramid formations and many other components. The guys on the team aren't just oak trees whose faces or shoulders become foot rests for the girls on the team, either.
"Actually there's a part of our routine where a guy goes up in the air and stands on the girls," El-Gabalawy said. "We throw him up in the air and then we throw a girl on top of him. They do it all. They jump, they have to do the dance, they throw girls all through the competition."
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 3, 2009 C8
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