Staffordshire Scarlettes Semester 1 Round Up
The first semester is always a busy one for the Scarlettes from recruiting new members, organising socials, supporting a variety of societies and sports teams as well as learning new techniques and skills within Cheerleading!
Through the Summer break, we expanded our committee and coaches in which we had meetings to get everyone familiar with the Cheerleading calendar as well as getting everything prepped for a very busy first semester. Routines were being choreographed, posters were being designed, mapped out which charities we wanted to work with, coaches were getting their qualifications through the British Cheerleading Association (BCA) and we were all ready to go. In addition to this, we expanded the number of squads to six, compared to last year where we had two teams, and this is composed of five competition teams and a recreational performance team to support our sports teams on campus. This year we have recruited 46 members through the Welcome Fair in September plus the free Give It A Go sessions that we ran through the end of September into early October; in which were a massive success. Members of the committee came back to University early to participate in the Welcome Week events such as helping students move into their accommodation, meet the committee event where new students were able to come and ask any questions that they had about joining Cheer and we got involved within the ‘Get Stoked’ Event! Each committee member advertised the society by wearing our training kits and bows at each of these Welcome Events so everyone knew exactly who we were!
Over this first semester, many students have been battling with the cost of living crisis and as a society, we wanted to make sure that we kept our costs down and for our members to feel comfortable in talking to our finance officers about how we can aid them within this tough time. We have increased our payments plans for members to pay for certain things within smaller amounts each month so it takes the pressure off their shoulders; making cheerleading accessible for all. In addition to this, we have sourced alternative merchandise from suppliers to decrease the price in the cost of living crisis. We all intend to find more alternatives to keep prices low and to continue our support for every single one of our members during this difficult time.
To expand our support for the sports teams at the University, we have began to support new teams such as Men’s basketball and we have organised to support more women’s sports teams in the new year. This also gives our performance team more opportunities to perform at half time in which will help their growth in confidence and it gives a chance for the wider team of the Scarlettes to come and watch them perform. Furthermore, we are still continuing to perform at the American football matches on Sundays that take place at home and away across the country.
Every Wednesday, our welfare officers host a study session that takes place from 5pm-7pm within the Catalyst which allows our new members to integrate with one another and to bring in University career support for Curriculum Vits (CV’s) and Cover Letters. We want to thank the welfare officers, Zabi Thornton and Chloe Hunt, for providing these weekly sessions to the society and we can’t wait for these to be brought back within the new year!
The Scarlettes announced some exciting news, back in September, that we were going to working with Worlds coaches from our local all-star cheerleading team named Momentum! Through this semester, we have created a partnership with Momentum in which we pay for external tumbling classes that are taught by Momentum coaches who are qualified up to Level 6! From Momentum attending the University, they provided us with their members only fee for any additional classes that they offer at their gym. One of these classes is a session called ‘Open Gym’ which allows our members to utilise Momentum’s facilities to expand their skills set and to gain experience with working with all-star cheerleading. We would like to thank Momentum for the amazing sessions that they have been teaching us this semester and for being so positive and encouraging in learning new skills. We are incredibly excited to be working with them again in the second semester!
Like we do every year, we have entered our competition members into one regional competition and a national competition that will both take place in February and March within the second semester. The event providers are Incredibly Cool Events (ICE) and BCA, we have not attended BCA for a few years and we are looking forward to returning to their event in March for the University Nationals Competition.
On the last session of the first semester, we hosted an external ‘Pole Fit’ class that was ran by a fantastic woman named Wendy who helped to build our members confidence within their dancing. The team absolutely loved having Wendy in and we all want to thank Wendy for the positive encouragement as well as aiding us with hints and tips on how we can improve on our performance aspect; especially for our upcoming competition season and varsity.
Movember was our first charity that we wanted to continue our support for and we aimed to beat our target of £100 from our raffle that we hosted last year. The Scarlettes decided to host two events for Movember in which were another well-being raffle and a ‘Bring a Buddy’ session. Through the month of November, our committee and coaches contacted the local community for prizes that they could donate for our raffle. This was a huge win for us as we had more businesses involved and member of Scarlettes donated their own prizes for the raffle too. Overall, we raised £237 in our well-being raffle which is phenomenal! In the last Sunday of November, our ‘Bring a Buddy’ took place in which it gave other clubs, societies, friends and partners the opportunity to participate within a cheerleading session. We raised £54 for this event! Furthermore, members of the Scarlettes posted out of their own personal social media pages that we were raising money for Movemeber and many of us personally donated to our own Movember page.
Overall, we raised an incredible amount of £673.41
We can’t express how proud we are to raise such a large amount of money for this amazing cause and this is the highest amount of money raised from a society at the University.
Last but not least, through our Christmas fun week, the Scarlettes have been bringing in food donations that we plan to donate to a food bank when we come back in January. We want to thank our members for bringing in these donations and for immersing yourselves into raising so much money and awareness to Movemeber and the food banks.
We have got so much planned for 2023 and we would like to say a huge thank you to our committee and coaches for all of your hard work that you have all shown this year! You have all been absolutely incredible and we all appreciate everything you do for the society. It’s time for all of us to take a well-earned break for Christmas!
Thank you to everyone at the Student Engagement Team for your continued support and we can’t wait to come back in January to continue our hard work and dedication to the society! We have got some exciting plans for our 20th Anniversary coming your way!
Have a wonderful Christmas!
Staffordshire Scarlettes