At the end of July, Ascension Cheer traveled to New Orleans and attended UCA camp. 

A typical day at cheer camp goes from 8AM to 8PM and consists of stunting, cheering, dancing, and playing games. With the help of the UCA staff, we learned a band dance, a cheer, a dance, and a sideline. The theme of this summer’s camp was magic! For theme night, we dressed up as unicorns and put on horns, gems, and tutus. A fun memory of the night was seeing our coach Victoria participate in a costume and dancing contest. One of the team’s favorite things about camp is meeting and making friends with the other teams. Cheerleader Noelle Kates says, “Getting to meet and make friends with the Navarre cheer team was a great experience, and it made our UCA cheer camp experience so much more fun having another team to bond and share memories with!!”

This year’s camp was one for the books in terms of our accomplishments. On the last day of camp, we perform for all of the teams attending, as well as the parents. Our performance consists of a game day portion and a camp routine portion and has five components, all of which we learned during camp. We definitely were not expecting this, but we won first place in game day routine, first in game day evauationl, first place in camp routine, and overall team spirit award! Another thing we got to take home was the banana, which is a blowup banana (this year a flamingo given to the team with the most spirit). 

Even though cheer camp can be mentally and physically draining, it is always filled with happy moments and team bonding. I feel like our team would not be the same without camp, and I feel so much closer to my teammates because of it. Camp helped us to prepare for the upcoming season, and I can’t wait to see what this year will bring!