PALMETTO — During the cheerleading competition at the Manatee County Fairgrounds on Monday evening, Lakewood Ranch cheerleader Justin Parrish looked into packed stands and was transformed.
“It’s like you’re the Rolling Stones and you packed the Taj Mahal,” Parrish said. “That’s the pump I get from it.”
Parrish awoke at 4 a.m. Monday and couldn’t go back to sleep because of the cheerleading competition. Lakewood Ranch ended up winning the five-team competition, leaving the Mustangs in a frenzy, kicking up puffs of dirt in the rodeo ring as they celebrated.
Palmetto finished second, followed by Manatee and a tie for fourth with Braden River and Bayshore.
Lakewood Ranch senior Ashley Plotts was still trembling after her team’s win. ”I’m shaking in my cheerleading shoes,” she said. As a flyer, Plotts is boosted at least four feet in the air — long enough for her to study the faces in the crowd — before falling to the arms of those who catch her, known as bases.
Thought cheerleading wasn’t dangerous?
Consider that, according to Manatee team athletic trainer Chris Peters, the Hurricanes have gone through about 80 yards of athletic tape. “That’s more than any other of our teams,” he said. Manatee’s Paige Carper said she’s hit double digits on bruises this year from jumping and tumbling. In Monday’s competition, a teammate hit Natalie Sousa on the nose during a drop. Sousa later was plugging her bleeding nose with tissue.
Palmetto coach Kelly Hoopingarner, a former cheerleader with the Tigers, is well aware of the danger. “There’s a chance a girl could freak out and get dropped,” she said.
Here’s the estimated damage report from Bayshore coach Jenerra Finklea – 85 rolls of tape, 14 braces that were used for various injuries to wrists, knees, ankles, shoulders, backs, necks, not to mention asthma attacks and concussions.
“We work so hard,” Finklea said. “A lot of our injuries are from tumbling.”
But the worst, by far, was from a stunt that left junior Kristi Drobecker numb from neck to toe.
During a practice in late September, after a miscommunication on a drop, 105 pounds of cheerleader fell about four feet and onto the shoulder of Drobecker. She slumped to the ground and could not feel the hands that kept her neck still or lifted her arms. She could not feel her own movements.
After sustaining what Drobecker described as pulled neck muscles and bruises, Drobecker regained her ability to feel and was out of the hospital in five days. Three weeks later, she twisted her ankle and was in crutches for two weeks.
Didn’t stop her. She was back to catching teammates again Monday.
“People think of cheerleading as short skirts and showing spirit,” Drobecker said. “In football, they have padding; baseball, they have a helmet and gloves. We have nothing.”
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