How One Cheer Club Owner is Pivoting her Business During Hard Times
By Reah Good
I will be doing a series of articles profiling some movers and shakers in Canadian Allstar Cheerleading. Samantha Thomas, known as Sam, is the co-owner of CheerCore Inc in Collingwood, Ontario with a second gym location in Barrie, Ontario. Like many gym owners, Sam fell in love with cheerleading in high school and imagined that maybe she could turn her passion into her vocation. Sam continued competitive allstar cheerleading during her years at York University. Then, CheerCore was established in 2009.
As a program, CheerCore has always been known for strong showings at competitions and they were the first Canadian program to win a first place division title at the prestigious National Cheerleading Association (NCA) Competition in Dallas, Texas, in 2015. Their Senior Gold team earned an impressive score of 96.43%.
Since then, Sam has joined forces with tumbling specialist, Coach Sahil, to help CheerCore athletes gain an edge. This year the CheerCore’s senior open division team, “24K”, would have been going to Cheerleading Worlds in April 2020, but unfortunately because of the COVID-19 pandemic their qualification bid is in limbo.
Since physical training inside a gym isn’t possible, Sam and Sahil will soon be launching a service called CheerCore Online which will contain specific multi-week long workouts for all acrobatic athletes that can be done from the comfort of their own home.
The very first program, “Flight School At Home” will be available starting in May 2020 with programs for jumps, tumbling and stunt strength to follow.
For those who would like a little taste of the drills that you can expect, head over to CheerCore.ca/flyer to get free access. You can also find lots of other training videos on the CheerCore youtube channel.
This break from team practice is the perfect opportunity to work on individual goals like balance and flexibility. How is your heel stretch? Maybe a scale stretch like Sam’s by end of May?