After the Rams football team score a touchdown and kick the extra points Fresno City College cheerleaders went into a cheer.
“Ok crowd, we need your help with this. WE ARE (clap clap) CITY (clap clap). WE ARE (clap clap) CITY(clap clap),”
Their goal was to rally as many fans as possible to follow their lead, so the team hears it; sometimes many members of the football team cheered with the crowd.
Hope Villines, in her first year as the coach of FCC’s cheerleaders. She has high hopes for her team.
“We are crowd leaders. We are here to get the crowd to cheer for whatever sport is cheering, for that is our main philosophy,” Villines said, adding that a lot of people “should be dancers or we should be professors, or we should be something like NFL cheerleaders, and that is not what we are here for.”
Villines was hired with the long term goal to rebuild her squad and future squads into a strong program.
“At most colleges, cheerleading falls into athletics, and that in what we are athletes.”
The difference between the cheerleading team and other athletic teams is that the cheerleading team has a season that is year round.
They hold their tryouts in March and start performing immediately. They also practice and compete throughout the summer; their season ends after basketball season.
What does it take to be an FCC cheerleader?
“To try out for this squad, you must be able to perform a cheer that we teach you. We teach you a dance; you must be able to do three different types of cheerleading jumps.”
These consist of a toe touch, pike, and a hurdler. In toe touch, the cheerleader jumps into the air, spreads his or her legs out wide and touches her toes; in pike, the cheerleader jumps in the air and touch both feet in front.
A hurdler consists of the cheerleader jumping in the air and kicking one leg out to the side and bringing her back leg, bent close to her buttocks, looking like a track runner jumping over the hurdles.
An example of how to do all the jumps isavailable at the Rampage website.
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-do-a-toe-touch-jump-in-cheerleading
Villines added a male stunt team to assist the women with their stunts.
She said, “We look for very strong male athletes that could come in and be the base for our female fliers.”
A flier is the person who is thrown in the air and does a stunt like a toe touch. Villines is currently in the process of turning her program into a training ground to help the members of her squad to the next level. She is helping them learn how to qualify for Fresno State or other universities.
Villines says she preaches to them that they must have respect for themselves and to others to be on her team.
“I would hope that when they leave here, they would be able to take their experience of talking and being in front of a crowd turn it around and be professional in front of their new bosses or go out and teach this great sport to younger girls.”
