Catch up with University of Leeds, Gryphons

 

 

 

 

Hi Guys, my name is Millie

I got the chance to attend one of The University of Leeds level 3 team, Gryphons, training sessions. I had a chat with two of the teams coaches, Owsh Lowe and Abi Greaves, to see how the season was going so far, and what we could expect. With competition season just around the corner, it was great to see how the team was progressing, and how the hard work they’d been putting on was paying off.

So here is how it went…

How would you say training is going so far this season?

Owsh: We’ve just done choreography for the routine, and put everything together, so we’ve just been perfecting the key points at the minute. We’ve got a routine now, so we can actually start working on the stunts for comp. It’s exciting!

So have you had many new freshers join?

More than any other year, nearly half the team is freshers this year and normally, on level 3 anyway, we only have like 5 or 6, so there is a lot this year.

Do you think this has made it more difficult?

Owsh: There’s quite a few experienced cheerleaders but obviously you’ve got to make sure everybody is doing it the same. We’ve been just drilling basic skills to make sure everybody is in time, but no, I think overall, it’s pretty strong.

Abi: Yeah, I think we’ve got a really strong team this year, we’ve got a lot of gymnasts and tumblers so it’s looking really good.

Owsh: Yeah, I think there’s only about 7 on the team that cant tuck back so it’s very exciting.

In Leeds the two biggest universities, University of Leeds and Leeds Beckett have a rugby varsity match. Every year thousands of students flock Headingley Carnegie Stadium, and each university has a cheerleading team do a half time performance. Gryphons represent Uni of Leeds.

How was Varsity for you, in terms of being ready and the general experience.

Owsh: We do it every year but this year it was really really rainy, so we didn’t know if we were actually going to be able to do it. We had to go on the pitch and try and skid around. We thought everyone was going to come off very injured, but it was actually fine, yeah it was really good in the end.

 

Have you done cheerleading before university?

Owsh: I have yeah.

Abi: Yeah, I have too.

What teams were you on?

Abi: I was on Aviator All Stars.

Owsh: I was on Derby Extreme.

How would you say Uni cheer differs to all-star cheer?

I think with our team its quite unique, in the sense that in the past however many years its been Aviator coaches doing it. It’s still ran by all-star coaches so it’s still very structured. This year is the first year that it’s student coach based, but they’re still very involved, they’ve done the routine and stuff and they’ll come in when they can.

Abi: I definitely prefer uni cheer though, the fact that everyone is over 18 really helps. It’s a lot more social and there is much more of a sense of a team. You get closer to everyone, ‘cause obviously everyone is in the same kind of boat as well.

 

 

If you could pick the best and the most stressful thing about it, what would it be?

Owsh: To be honest I think the best thing is the actual social side of it. Quite a few girls will come in who don’t get along with their flat mates, or their course or stuff, but you’ve still got a really strong foundation of friends that you’ve made from cheer. It’s difficult not to make friends with the kind of sport that it is.

Abi: I’d say the worst thing is just when you’ve got a lot of uni to do at the same time, there’s times where I just don’t want to go to training, but I have too. But then when you do go it’s great, sometimes there’s just things I should be doing instead.

Owsh: Training is always quite late as well. We’ve got quite a lot of medics, for example, who are always on placement and don’t finish until 6, so we always have training at 8 or 9. It does always start really late and everyone just wants to go to bed.

 

When is your first competition? Are you excited?

Owsh: Future Cheer, in February. We are very excited, the competition the past 2 years, we’ve kind of fallen out with it, we’ve always just come shy of the top spot. We came second last year but the team that beat us got the highest score of the whole competition, and we got second highest. This year, we are going to have it, this is the year.

How many comps do you normally do in a season and which ones?

3, it varies which ones. We normally do FC ones, in my first year we did a legacy one and last year we did ICC Nationals, and we might go back to that one. We are still debating on our second comp.

Anything interesting to add that we haven’t covered?

Owsh: I think the good thing about this year especially, is that our level 2 team are almost a complete brand-new team.  Our match team is normally quite small, but last year there were like 70 people, maybe more, so a lot of them have moved to a competition team. We’ve got one girl on this team from match team last year. Being on match team makes them more comfortable if they’ve never done it before to be on a comp team. I think it’s really good in that way.

I really enjoyed catching up with this team and wish them the best of luck for all their comps this season.

Until next love Millie