Tracking Panthers

The Tab spends a day with the Panthers, Leicester’s cheerleading squad.

As the Varsity craze dwindles for another year, and the sporting giants are once again allowed to enjoy a booze filled night out without the niggling nerves of the all-important game to ‘thrash the poly’, I place the focus on a society that is all too often pushed to the background.

Rugby Varsity (a way of celebrating –or commiserating in DMUs case- the end of a particularly vicious season of sport) is something for even the most un-sporty person to get involved in, trust me on this point!  With thousands of people coming to watch the clash of the titans- possibly a slight exaggeration- it wasn’t only the rugby lads that had to get their head in the game, at half time the Panthers pounced onto the pitch ready to entertain the rather chilly audience! The performance was a hair-raising one, not just due to the Arctic breeze. Even with a muddy field as a stage I was thrilled to see the panthers perfect practice come through in front of the crowd when it counted, they truly deserved the rapturous cheer the crowd gave them!

I was lucky enough to sandwich in some time in their hectic practice schedule earlier that day to chat to them about training and what it takes to be a cheerleader. It turns out that unsurprisingly this smooth routine didn’t happen overnight, the girls had been training 5 times a week in preparation for Varsity- Can’t say I envy those early get ups! Adding to the already huge task of choreographing a routine – new rules implemented three weeks before limited the number of girls in a routine to 25 and drastic changes were required. Nothing like a bit of additional pressure to help the girls to excel!

Take a look below to see the panthers in action

After watching those videos I think it’s fair to say Panthers goes beyond a society – with those splits, tricks and kicks I would definitely class it as a sport!!

Thank you very much to the Panthers for letting me visit on Wednesday and good luck in your BCA University Nationals coming up, show them what you got!