By Annie
You’re probably wondering what your cheerleaders are doing at the moment? Well, most importantly, they’re following recommendations, social distancing and working from home, when possible. Just as it does for you, their life goes on! And in the meantime, we still need to get ready for our season…which is quickly arriving!
The planning
Sidney and I are hard at work preparing for the season: working out the logistics and schedule of the photo shoot for the official pictures, the uniforms, the practice gear, the shoes and accessories, the music selection, all the paperwork and accreditation, dealing with partner agreements and community and commercial requests, doing a lot of social media, remote follow ups with our cheerleaders and a whole lot of other tasks related to the Alouettes Foundation, community involvement and players. We can confirm that the cheer camp for our 5 to 17-year-olds will be back this summer.
The preparation
Our secret… is that we have a secret Facebook page! Our squad captains Charlie, Alex-Andréa, Andrée-Anne and Nadine delegate a lot of tasks to their respective teams. I truly believe in the power of teamwork and everyone collaborates to the creation of choreography and routines. The choreography you will see on the field this summer will be the result of the social isolation, brought to you by COVID-19! A posting schedule is made, and the videos are posted in our secret group so everyone can learn the routines from home.
When the song selection is made, we send it all to Nadine, who is our designated DJ, so she can cut the songs to 60 seconds and adjust the BPM (our beats are usually 140 BPM). We already have 4 tunes ready out of 6! Did you know that during our football games, there are four 110-seconds commercial breaks per quarter? You now understand why you rarely see us on TV… we dance when the commercials play!
Physical preparation is super important. It’s key to keep moving, because a football game means 3 hours of movement for us… you try that! A daily workout is necessary and everyone needs to train differently, depending on their position – dancer, stunt, base, back – and needs to work on their strength, flexibility, cardio, or all three together!
Our superheroes
Yup, we have superheroes on the team: girls who work in the medical field or work among the more vulnerable, girls who have very little time on their hands and who have much greater things to worry about at the moment. Keep it up ladies, we look up to you!
To each and every one of you: take care of yourself, wash your hands, stay home and we’ll see you on the field in June!
Annie
