CHEER IN NEW ZEALAND

Beth is 17 years old and has been doing cheer for 8 years. She is currently on an Open Level 5 Team called Allstar Legacy Viperz as well as Junior Team New Zealand. We invited her here today to speak about cheer in New Zealand!

How did you get into cheer?

The first program I was with was All Star Infinity, which I was with until the end of last year and in 2016 they came to my school and did a performance They were giving out a free term of rec[reational] cheer to 10 people who signed the form and I didn’t want to do it originally but my friends dared me to do it At nine years old I was really competitive so I wasn’t going to lose so I signed up for it and got chosen. Then I was like, okay, might as well go, and it turns out I really liked it!

Describe your competition season. Is it similar to the states since you also attend worlds?

Our cheer season starts in late January and finishes early December. But our competition season runs from late June to early November, because it lines up with our school year, since our schools go from January to November For Worlds teams and ICU teams, they select them around August, and we don't start properly training until late September for choreography and stuff, but you're given your stunt group. You're given a set of skills and you have to find time to go into the gym with your stunt group and you have to do that throughout the year, throughout the whole summer as well. After summer break (December-January), we get back together as a team to train again

What are your competitions like?

Generally, most of our competitions are actually in the same venue because there's not that many places they can host competitions in New Zealand. So I live in Auckland, which is like the biggest city in the country and it is where all of the Team New Zealand teams are based For the most part, all of our competitions are at the same venue with a few of them being somewhere else, but almost all competitions in Auckland are here. It's like a 25 minute drive from my house. So we barely even need to travel.

There's [a few] other competitions that other gyms go to because in New Zealand, there are two governing bodies. They're called NZCU and NZCA and different gyms are a part of different ones. So they go to different competitions hosted by each governing body.

Is cheer a big thing in New Zealand?

There aren’t that many teams here in general. Obviously, it gets more as you go down the levels, but there are not that many level five teams.

What are some ways that you think cheer can reach more people?

Some of our programs do performances at school galas and [I think] that's a really good way of advertisement. Generally, the advertisement is pretty good, but it's obviously very niche towards the people who already do cheer So if you don't cheer, you’re not typically going to see it

After ICU, all of the Team New Zealand videos went semi-viral on TikTok and all the comments were like, oh my God, I didn't know New Zealand had cheer so I guess that was a good way of getting it out there more

Are there any differences you have noticed between US cheer and NZ cheer?

I think the general thing is definitely the amount of teams in a division and the size of the teams because over here, it's not unusual to see a team of three stunt groups and it's surprising to see a team that manages to put up like five or six But over in the States, it's so standard that if they came over here, they'd probably be shocked by how small our teams are But obviously, it's a way smaller country and way smaller gyms so we can't really manage to put together that big of teams anyways.

Is there school cheer AND allstar cheer or just one or the other? Which is more popular?

Our school cheer isn't anything like American cheer. Most schools generally don't even have it. But basically, if the school already has a lot of cheerleaders, they’ll approach an all star gym that is close to them and be like, hey, can you coach a cheer team for us?

I would say our school cheer is more like a rec level because we don't really do sideline because we don't do American football or basketball and have the big games and stuff so there isn't really a need for school cheerleaders. All star is definitely a lot more popular.