Cheerleading National Champions

The Co-Ed Division II National Championship is at Home at NKU

Norse Win Fourth Title in Five Years

The Northern Kentucky University co-ed cheerleading team won its fourth Co-Ed Division II National Championship in five years Jan. 15-17, 2010, at The UCA College Cheerleading & Dance Team National Championship at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, by following a simple formula.

"It's just quality kids," NKU cheerleading coach Daren Harris said. "When we started this program, we just started with a core group of kids and we really just started building their skills.

"As corny as this sounds, the whole thing is built on believing in what we're doing, believing in each other. We just went down the first year we competed (in 2006). We were nobody and we went down there and took the thing. We just kind of took the thing by storm and won."

The storm hit again in 2007.

"The second year we went back, we had a lot of returning kids," Harris said. "We won that one."

The Norse missed out on the championship in 2008 in what Harris called a small hiccup, but the titles returned to campus in 2009 and again this year.

It affirmed that NKU has one of the top cheerleading programs in the country.

"We brought it back last year and as you build a program like that, more and more people start coming and hearing about it," Harris said. "We have girls from Wisconsin. On the all-girls team, we have a girl from Columbine High School in Colorado. We get a lot of local kids. Cheerleading in Kentucky is a big thing."

The Norse do not simply show up at Disney each year and bring home a trophy. Several months of work go into the competition.

UCA is more traditional college cheerleading, rather than show cheer. The main focus is on cheerleading, getting the crowd involved and the physical ability of the athletes.

So the Norse spend a couple months each year putting together a skills tape and they send it in. Those are scored and what amounts to a preseason ranking comes out. NKU has gained the No.1 spot the last four years and the No. 1 team gets a paid trip to the championships.

They then submit a crowd participation tape showing the cheerleaders involved with crowds at events such as Meet the Norse Night and those are scored for 15 of the 100 points.

The rest is broken down into the cheer and skills like stunting, pyramids, tumbling and basket tosses in Orlando. The routine is two minutes and 30 seconds.

"The important parts of it are knowing how to lay it out and put things together and really highlight the skills that you have," Harris said. "Our emphasis is on stunting. Our boys and our girls are very good stunters. That just comes from being physical athletes."

It is important to note that the NKU squad does not have a competition team. The same student athletes that have won those four national titles is the same group that leads the crowd at NKU basketball games.

"These are the kids that cheer at the basketball games," Harris said. "They become crowd leaders at the games. They stand on the sidelines and they cheer for the games. We support our university and our fans and players. That's the No. 1 focus that we have."