The B.C. Cheer competitive season kicked off at the Richmond Olympic Oval Saturday with the 18th annual PINK Cheer Championships.
The event is the longest running competition in Western Canada. A total of 79 teams, comprised of over 1100 athletes, were in attendance including clubs from Kamloops and Vancouver Island. Hosted Pinnacle Cheer Events (www.pinnaclecheerevents.com) it is a favorite among many of the programs in the Lower Mainland who choose it to kick-off their competition season.
Panther Cheer Athletics co-owners, Stephanie Kennedy and Dawn Silver choose to attend as it helps their coaching staff push teams to get ready before Christmas and to get valuable feedback from judges before the new year.
Panther Cheer Athletic teams will be travelling to the US early in January.
“We strongly believe that those programs that take advantage of this early season event have a definite advantage moving forward. It gives our coaches a chance to take the feedback from the judges and upgrade and modify the routines as needed”, says Kennedy. “Attending this event is what gives us a strict timeline in developing our routines and guiding our training. We know that three weeks before the event all of our teams must be running full routines. By the week before, all the teams are running ‘clean’ routines, meaning anything that coaches feel is not working has been changed and modified to ensure our athletes have success and feel proud of what they accomplished at this event.”
Their results speak for themselves.
All nine Panther Cheer teams had top three finishes. Six of them brought home the championship banner.
“This event is also the first competition for many of our “new to cheer” athletes who are on our Prep team. We had athletes as young as three out on the competition mat showcasing the increase in their confidence, skills and fitness that Panther Cheer has helped them gain.” says Silver.
Panther Cheer is now accepting new athletes onto both their competitive and prep teams for the January - April session. Those that are interested should call the office for more information at 778-297-8437 or visit their website at www.panthercheerathletics.com
