Trip to Orlando
It was the biggest challenge we had ever undertaken. In September 2006 the senior coed team of the Chorley Warriors took a vote and agreed we would effectively give up all weekends for eight months and try to raise the £22000 necessary to get the team to the Cheerleaders of America Open Championships in Orlando in April.
I am not sure all cheerleaders had quite thought through the prospects of how immense a task it was going to be to raise that sort of money.
However, we set off full of enthusiasm on official launch on Chorley date, Sept 9th, and the team ran around Chorley posting 'please help us' letters in every business, restaurant, shop letter box in a mile radius around the town. No one was safe!
Then began our events. Weekend 1- sponsored walk, weekend 2- Church coffee morning, weekend 3- car boot sale at school, weekend 4- market stall on Chorley market etc etc and so it continued. Some money came in from businesses, but not a significant amount, school provided us with a couple of thousand, we held craft fair, huge raffle, sold Warrior teddies, held a massive ‘guess the name of the Warrior teddy' competition, had an Indian night, quiz night, four Asda bag packs, a sponsored stay awake, ran a cheer course for Primary school pupils, had another two market stalls, a jazz evening, a murder mystery night, wrote another 200 letters to lesser known companies, managed to secure ourselves a lottery grant and a Youth Opportunity Grant and Chorley Council gave us a sports award donation, we got some sponsorship money from Karndean Carpets and some from loans.co.uk. We had moments of disillusionment, 17 pretty severe (non violent) arguments (teams that work together so much tend not to get on after a while) and I came pretty close to a nervous breakdown!
And with just a week to go a very exausted bunch of cheerleaders hit their £22,000 target.
So on April 3rd we headed off for Orlando and for me giving up eight months of my life was worth it for the moment one particular cheerleader who had never flown or been abroad before turned to me in the tunnel leading to the plane and said:
'Miss, we're really going!'
And we really did go.
Things didn't run smoothly however, and on arriving at Orlando airport at 2am we discovered our four 12-seater minivans were not available (despite booking them) and instead we had to have one 12-seater, a 7 seater, four five seater cars and four convertibles, very nice, but not easy to drive anywhere in convoy on the roads of the US! In fact the amount of times we had to pull into lay-bys to wait for cars to catch up was quite ridiculous. And I somehow just kept ending up in the Sea World car park for no apparent reason.
We were staying in a cheap hotel on International Drive and at 7am on the first morning I was rudely awoken to the sound of pattering feet outside my room as the entire squad headed off to the swimming pool below. It turned out they had not been to bed. It was at this point that I realised this team might be senior, but they were as excited as my peewee team get before a competition.
We spent the morning acclimatising and then set off for the Gaylord Palms Resort, the competition venue, mid afternoon.
The competition arena was absolutely huge and extremely plush. The first day on the practise mat was not too bad, the routine went well and it was very nice to bump into the coaches from RSD Action and the Hertfordshire Sirens who were also there. It gave us a bit of British moral support!
Our first day happiness, however, was a bit of a fluke, as on the next day, our first day of competing, we arrived on the practise mats to discover how utterly amazing the American teams actually are and we, in comparison, suffered a total lack of self esteem. Watching the stunts, gymnastics and the death-defying flight paths of the basket tosses made my team cower. The practise mat was a disaster as the team were actually embarrassed to peform in front of the American teams, but after a lot of pep-talking they went out and did their thing on the mat and it wasn't half bad!
At night we met up with the coaches and cheerleaders of the Ohio State Valley Cheerleaders who very kindly held a T-shirt swapping party and stunt workshop in our honour. This was supposed to be held by the swimming pool which is where my team, us hardened Brits, shivered waiting for them for an hour, before the Ohio team said it was just too cold for them and we were going inside!
The next day was again very similar, except for a spot of alligator watching in the morning and then the Sunday was manic with 25 solo, duet, cheer, dance and group and partner stunt routines. I didn't sit down for eight hours!
The competition, though, was an immense success. We totted up no less than 48 trophies, the best being our four 1sts which we won in the senior coed partner stunt division, Nathan and Jackie won the varsity partner stunt section, Olivia Roughley came first in her solo cheer division and Janine and Julie Hicks won the dance duo. We also won 2nd in the coed cheer. We took all the trophies outside for a mammoth ‘photos under the palm tree' session.
On the next two days we relaxed somewhat but unfortunately the beautiful sunshine we missed while performing at the competition changed abruptly and we spent two days at Disney World and Universal Studios in torrential monsoon-like conditions. Never have cheerleaders been as wet!
And so, one week later, we travelled back home to Chorley. However, just as we though it was all plain sailing we hit another hitch as the airport in Chicago, our stop over, was snowed in and we had to stop in Indianapolis until they had cleared the Chicago runway, (much to the distress of one cheerleader who awoke, very confused, as the plane landed and text her mum to say we had made a de-tour to India!)
When we arrived back at Manchester Airport the parents met us holding a fantastic ‘Welcome back Warriors' banner but all cheerleaders were too excited about seeing Kerry Katona on the plane to notice!. All did agree, however, that the experience had been absolutely fantastic and extremely worth all the fundraising. The Americans made us feel very welcome and all cheerleaders were unanimous in saying it had been one of the best things they had ever done in their lives.