This season, Robin Bailey wanted to take her Plant City Dolphins cheerleading squad to the conference championship and leave with a win.
With a small, relatively inexperienced squad, she had to go deep into the playbook — right into that territory of ideas so crazy that they just might work.
In this case, it went off without a hitch.
The Dolphins’ varsity cheerleading squad, a group of 14 girls, were able to perfect the basket toss just in time to win the Tri-County Youth Football and Cheerleading Conference Cheer-Off. It was no small feat, considering that half of the girls had never cheered before.
“I told them from the beginning, ‘I don’t care where we place in the other competitions — those don’t matter. What matters is the prize at the end. You’re shooting for that grand prize,’” Bailey says.
And although they made it look easy, there was much work to be done beforehand.
FRESH START
Bailey and her family moved to Plant City two years ago, and her daughter, Cassidy Coburn, wanted to get into cheerleading after spending several years in competitive gymnastics. At the first day of Dolphins practice, Bailey was asked to be the coach. Although she had no prior cheer coaching experience, she accepted.
This season, she moved up to the varsity level with her daughter and four other girls. As for the rest of the team, only two of the nine newcomers had prior cheering experience. So, Bailey and her assistants had to go to the drawing board.
“You have to start from the basics,” she says. “The first two weeks of practice, you work on the basic movements, tightness, teaching them good techniques. Then, you start hitting them with routines, harder stunts, and you move up from there.”
For a bunch of rookies, the Dolphins did well in competitions. They began the season with a fourth-place finish in the East Bay Bucs Cheer Classic, in August, and placed second in the subsequent Patriot Explosion competition the following month.
It was then that Bailey and her staff realized how much potential the girls had, especially for such a small group. The team was making noticeable progress, but everyone still felt that there had to have been some way to really turn heads at Cheer-Off.
That’s when the idea to perform a basket toss was born.
HIGH RISK, HIGH REWARD
Pulling out her cell phone, Bailey brings up a video of a group of cheerleaders performing a basket toss in a gym. Four men form a base, and the lone woman goes up top as the flyer. With every bit of strength they can muster, the men launch the flyer into the air — almost to the ceiling — and watch as she tucks her legs and does a back flip.
There’s so much potential for this move to end badly if someone messes up. So much that the move is banned at the high school level.
But Bailey saw potential. A move like that would certainly help the Dolphins on the scorecards, and the girls appeared to have the ability to pull it off.
“I saw how little our flyers were, and the new flyer that went up in the air could tumble really well,” Bailey says. “And, she’s fearless. You could tell Autumn (Bass), ‘This is what we’re gonna do,’ and she’d be like, ‘OK.’ And, we’d do it.”
It also might have been banned at the TCYFCC level, for all anyone knew to begin with.
“We weren’t even sure if it was legal in the TCYFCC,” Bailey says. “So, Kim Gude made some phone calls to check to see if it was legal. She came back and told me, yes, it was legal, but they had some concerns about liability on the Plant City Dolphins’ part.”
The Dolphins’ board of directors elected to let the team perform the move, but on one condition: they had to be able to go in front of the board and demonstrate that they could, in fact, pull it off successfully.
Bailey and her team were given a deadline of Oct. 19 — which was extended because of rain — but managed to nail the move on the first day that they really tried to learn it.
“Once we got it, it was on,” Bailey says. “They didn’t want to do anything else, they were so excited. I get chills talking about it. It was so awesome to see the excitement in their faces and work so hard for something like that.”
They first tried the move in competition at the Antioch Pow-Wow, and it worked.
“Everybody in the crowd was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Bailey says. “It was unreal.”
The Dolphins placed third in that event. They had a fall in another stunt. But the fact that the basket toss worked at all was a good sign for Cheer-Off.
STICKING THE LANDING
In the championship, the Dolphins completed both the basket toss and the rest of their routine with ease. They ended up in first place, but not without some more work.
“After we did the toss, the judges were like, ‘That’s illegal,’” trainer Kelsey Howard says. “I’m like, ‘Pay attention! Watch!’ They were amazed by it — I don’t think they thought we could do it.”
The judges believed that the move was illegal because it is in high school. But after a 10-minute conversation with Bailey, the judges and the tournament director were set straight. The team was in the clear and took the champion title.
“At the end, they started crying,” Howard says. “They were hugging me, and we were all holding hands. We were all in a circle, and they announced we were in first place, and we all started freaking out.”
Now, Bailey is considering stepping down from her head coaching role to serve as an assistant. Howard has already volunteered to take over. If she does, she faces a pretty big task of her own: topping the basket toss.
But, all parties couldn’t be more pleased with how things have turned out and how they look for next season.
“It all worked out, and I couldn’t be more proud,” Bailey says.
THE SQUAD
Autumn Bass, Chelsey Loyd, Morgan Nickle, Leighann Miller, Alyssa Cundiff, Jade’a Broome, Rachel Turner, Halei Alderman, Hollie Manassa, Victoria Cardwell, Tanner Masson, Cassidy Coburn, Megan Hobbs, Ceara Cooper
Coaches:
Robin Bailey – Head Coach
April Taylor – Assistant Coach
Stacey Cundiff – Assistant Coach
Kelsey Howard – Trainer