Ditch the pom-poms and drop the chants.
Cal High’s stunt team has been taking cheerleading to a whole new level, and competitive cheer has only added to the mix.
Combined with sideline cheer, these three sports are what make up the Cal cheer program. Sideline cheer begins in the fall, when the athletes perform mainly at football games to support and cheer on athletic teams and encourage school spirit.
Competitive cheer takes place in the winter and has teams choreograph their own routines to compete head to head against other schools. Each performance is scored out of 100 points, JV cheer and varsity stunt coach Bianca Lucatero said.
“Competitive cheer is somewhat close to another type of cheer that we don’t have at Cal called All-Star cheer,” junior Sophia Park, a member of the competitive cheer and stunt teams, said. “It’s basically like a normal routine we would perform at a football game, but we would add a kind of cheer in the middle of it.”
This year was the first year Cal offered competitive cheer since pre COVID-19. It’s also the first year competitive cheer is being recognized by the North Coast Section (NCS), and in fact they reached out to Cal to reform a team.
“This year, [NCS] hosted their first traditional competitive cheer competition,” Lucatero said. “So they asked us if we would be willing to get a team together and compete, and we said absolutely. ”
Without NCS tournaments in past years, Cal’s competitive cheer team participated in California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) tournaments and even traveled to Orlando, Lucatero said. But she feels the travel is no longer worth it, especially as Cal has shifted its focus to stunt.
Stunt, or stunt cheer, completes the trifecta in the spring season. Performing set routines sent to teams across the nation by USA Cheer, stunt removes the crowd-leading element and focuses on the technical and athletic components of cheer including partner stunts, pyramids, basket tosses, group jumps, and tumbling, according to the Cal cheer and stunt website. It was first introduced at Cal in 2016 and has been thriving ever since.
Each game of stunt is divided into four quarters, each of which focuses on a specific skill, such as partner stunts or pyramids and tosses, Lucatero said. Two teams compete head-to-head at the same time, choosing which level routine (ranked one through six with six being the most difficult) to play, and then performing. The best performance earns a point, with 24 total points available.
Senior Evelyn Stout, the stunt team captain and member of the competitive cheer team, describes how tight these games are.
“One step could differ a point,” Stout said. “Last year we went into overtime at the State Championship, and the year prior, we went into double overtime at the NCS Championship.”
Adding to the stress of the competition, the final quarter is worth 12 of the 24 points.
“So the last quarter could define how a game goes, and that’s something that our team is really good at,” Stout said. “We, I would say, definitely come back in the fourth quarter. We have this fourth quarter energy, is what we call it.”
Cal’s impressive track record proves the team’s ability to do well in these situations.
In the past two years, not only has the stunt team won the East Bay Athletic League (EBAL) and NCS titles, but Cal also has placed second at the State Finals. They also won the Joust, a stunt competition attended by many of the best southern California teams, the last two years. Their latest Joust title came this past Sunday in Riverside where they beat each team by over five points.
Even competitive cheer won NCS despite it being their first year as a team.
“The day of the [NCS competitive cheer] competition was really exciting,” Park said. “The day was kind of hectic and we did have to change a lot of things last minute, but I feel like as a team, we all trust each other.
“We all trust our coaches, and we really pushed for what we knew we could do,” she continued. “I feel like that really made the difference in our performance.”
Lucatero attributes the team’s successes to the hard work they put in. The stunt team practices daily, amounting to 15-18 hours per week, which is the maximum allowed by the CIF.
“I think I have the hardest workers in the program that I’ve ever met. These girls are so committed and so dedicated to the sport,” Lucatero said. “I’ve just never met more hard working athletes in my life. They come to practice, they want to do well, they want to be supportive of their teammates, they want the team to win, rather than just an individual win, and they all work together so well, and I’m just very proud of them.”
Junior Jadyn Vo said that during practice the team tries to create a positive atmosphere where the athletes can learn and grow together.
Stout said that the team also focuses on having good technique and consistency.
Practice and consistency creates muscle memory, and because of this, the team fortunately has never had an accident despite performing their seemingly risky jumps, stunts and tumbles.
As such a successful team, prospective students face a lot of pressure and competition in tryouts.
“Tryouts for any cheer sport Cal has, every single year have gotten way more competitive than the last,” said Park, who was on the stunt time for the first time this season. “I definitely did have a lot of fear that I wouldn’t make it this year, just because there were so many girls that thought would have taken my spot.”
Despite the competitiveness of the stunt program, which generally participates in about two dozen games, students said they enjoy being a part of the stunt team.
“There’s a lot of competitive spirit and the team is really close knit,” said senior Lauren Ko, a sole tumbler on the stunt team. “Going to games is a bunch of fun.”
Stout said she loves how dedicated the coaches are, and how they make the students feel more like a family instead of a team.
“I’ve never had sisters growing up, but the stunt team is so family oriented that like, I am so close with every girl on the stunt team where I feel like I have a bunch of sisters,” Stout said.
