Kingston athletes perform for hometown crowd at Big East Blast

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By Kristen Coughlar

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EMC Sports - The Canadian cheerleading circuit will stop in Kingston this Saturday. Teams from across Ontario and Quebec will descend on the K-Rock Centre where they will compete in the Big East Blast.

The event will represent the first and only opportunity this season for those athletes with the Kingston Elite All-Start Cheerleading Company to showcase their skills to local audiences.

"The only team in our club that is not competing is our Worlds team...the rest of them will be competing. They've been working really hard, it means a lot to them because it's a hometown crowd and it's the only one," said director Sandy Han.

"It's more exciting because it's like the only chance that family and friends, especially classmates, can come because the rest of them are just all so far away. It's really the only chance that they get to actually show their friends what they do and they can see it in town."

The Big East Blast will also represent the first and only opportunity for local audiences to check out the company's Special Needs team, which was launched this past fall.

The team has 23 athletes that practice with the team each Friday, 17 of which will showcase their talents at this weekend's competition.

"It's going really well. They've been working at developing their routine and learning it. They've learned it to counts now and we're working on putting it to the music that they'll do it to at competition," said coach Becca Leroux. Leroux coaches the team alongside both Courtney Walters and Amanda Biasi.

The entire coaching staff and volunteers are both pleased and impressed with what the athletes on the Special Needs team have been able to accomplish in such a short time period.

"They came from having no kind of experience whatsoever with anything like cheerleading to not only learning skills, but then putting those skills together with other skills and learning them to counts. I think they've done a really good job," Leroux said.

She noted that competing for the first time is overwhelming for any cheerleader, so in order to prepare the Special Needs group for the upcoming competition they have all the volunteers and athletes practicing in their uniforms, and this Friday they will perform the routine for family and friends.

"We're trying to make it as realistic to the competition as we can prior to going there."

Stepping into the spotlight is nothing new for team member Nathan Sikkema, who said he is not nervous about this Saturday's performance.

"I'm a performer." Sikkema has appeared locally on stage in numerous roles with the Limestone Players.

He said he has enjoyed both meeting new friends at practice and learning the various cheerleading moves.

"I think the routine is coming along great. I love it."

Leroux hopes that audience members will also enjoy the routine, which the team has been hard at work on for five months.

"This is their big ending, it's like their big show...I think its fun. They're all smiles and you can tell some of them are just having such a great time."

For more information on this Saturday's Big East Blast, including a performance schedule, visit http://canadiancheer.com/.




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