All-Girl Cheer Team
In some circles, the Georgia Southern Eagles are synonymous with winning national championships. That is certainly the case with the cheerleaders.
On April 13, 2012, Georgia Southern won the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA) Division I All-Girl Intermediate national championship in Daytona, Fla. It was the third time in the last five years the Eagles took home the title.
Their first championship came in 2008 – which also happened to be their first season in the competition. This time around, the Eagles fought back after a day-one, seventh-place placement to win the championship on day two.
“That first day, we made a number of mistakes,” said head coach Barry Munkasy. “Being in seventh place and coming back to win is kind of like being down by 24 points in the fourth quarter and coming back and winning a football game.”
Led by co-captains Rachel Miller and Kristen Pirie, the Eagles finished the second day of the competition with a score of 8.315, edging out West Virginia University (8.188) and Clemson University (8.140). In all, the Eagles beat out 13 teams for the title.
The Georgia Southern all-girl competition team isn’t exactly a well-kept secret. In fact, the same cheerleaders on the sidelines at Georgia Southern’s football and basketball games are the ones bringing home national titles.
“I think that says a lot about the kids. They juggle all of the football responsibilities, the basketball responsibilities and on top of that, their competitive responsibilities,” said Munkasy. “The things that we do on the sideline focus on motivating and entertaining the crowd. The things we do in competition are much different. It’s a give-and-take, and it takes a balance to work on our competitive material, too.”
“We are a sideline team that competes,” he added. “We’re not a competitive team that does sideline.”
The national prominence of Georgia Southern’s cheerleaders got a big boost from an alumnus before the Eagles began competing in the NCA nationals in 2008. The winning routines have all been designed by Chris White, who works for the Stingray Allstars, an Atlanta-based cheer company formed by former Georgia Southern cheerleader Casey Jones.
“They got together up there and Casey said, ‘Why don’t you go down to Statesboro and help support that program?’ Since then, Chris White has become a great friend of the Georgia Southern cheerleaders,” Munkasy said.
Along with the all-girl squad, the Eagles also competed with the coed cheerleaders and the mascot, “Gus the Eagle,” at the NCA national championships. The coed squad finished sixth out of 19 teams, and Gus placed third for his highest finish yet. He beat out notable mascots like “Hokie Bird” of Virginia Tech and “Big Red” of Western Kentucky University. Gus finished just short of the national champion, George Mason University’s “George,” and Oklahoma City University’s “Starsky the Ram.”
The skill sets of the cheerleaders help determine the team on which they will compete – all-girl or coed. For example, to perform with the coed squad, all the girls need to be willing to go up in the air. Those that aren’t usually end up as bases on the all-girl team. Finding out where each cheerleader belongs is partly based on personality and largely based on skill.
“One of the things that has kind of changed over the last few years is that the cheerleaders are becoming specialized,” said Munkasy. “A football team has offensive linemen, wide receivers and quarterbacks. I need to have a quarterback. I need to have wide receivers and offensive linemen, too, but we call them flyers, middle bases and bases.”
Recently, the Eagles began competing in the College STUNT Association, too. STUNT is an emerging NCAA sport derived from cheerleading. At the end of the 2011-12 academic year, Georgia Southern sophomore Conice Leverett and freshman Ashlee Newsome were named First-Team, All-American along with 18 other athletes from around the nation.