- I had never thought about trying cheerleading at all,
but, you know, I had a free night.
(intro music)
- I'm pretty excited about being on an all male squad.
- I'm nervous about the live performance
that we're going to have to do.
I falter under pressure.
- The only other cheerleading experience I've had
was watching Bring It On.
- Bring It On.
- Ahh, yeah, Bring It On, right?
- As a kid, when I would go to sporting events,
I would always look at the cheerleaders.
But I would wish, maybe, that I was a cheerleader.
- Any other kind of male sport has this like,
really like dominant aggressive thing to it.
Where I think cheerleading is presented
a little bit more as graceful.
- So I think girls thrive in that,
and guys kind of step away from that.
- I think it's definitely going to be hard for me
to tap into being what a cheerleader is.
- I think if you're a male cheerleader,
that doesn't make you any less of man.
- Cheerleading goes against my own
personal idea of what a man is,
which again I think speaks more about me than anything else.
But maybe I'll learn something new today.
- CheerLA is an all adult, nonprofit team,
dedicated to raising funds for HIV
and AIDs awareness charities.
- [All] Wooh!
- [Voiceover] We are part of a large organization
known as the pride cheer association.
The aim is to raise funds for local charities
through our cheer for life program.
- One of the things that I absolutely love
about cheerleading is the athleticism of it.
The thrill of being physically active
and cheering and making people happy
and smile, you can't beat that feeling.
- Cheerleading takes a lot of strength
but it's generally not just one person holding the stunt.
So you've really got to rely on each other,
learn each other's strengths and weaknesses,
and together we can do these amazing stunts,
that we can never fathom to do on our own.
- It's been a great way to make lifelong friendships
because there's no stronger bond than a cheer mate.
- And if it's something that you truly want to do,
never ever ever give up.
- And you're never too old to do it.
51 years old, still doing it.
- What are you guys thinking?
- I think we got this.
- So the basics of stunt, there's
a couple different positions to go through.
There's the back spot, which is the gruel of the stunt,
but the most responsible job
is making sure whoever is on top is always safe.
If you get hit, it don't matter,
you catch it no matter what.
There's also two bases, provide most
of the power in the foundation.
Then there's lastly, the top, or the flyer.
It's the person going on top,
and puts their life in people's hands.
You guys are based on body line and strength.
- [All] We got you.
- Sounds really good, if you go for it, they got you.
- If we don't got you, the padding got you.
- And we're going to teach you a dance today.
Hop one and two and three hold four.
Put your right wist over your left one.
Ready? You're going to reach around.
- [All] Three.
- One two down drive.
Down drive. And settle.
That was really nice.
This is one, hold two.
- And two down up, one two down up.
- No no.
- You're there, you're there.
- Alright good. Let's try from the beginning,
real quick, from the top.
Alright guys so that's the dance.
So you're on your own.
- [All] Three, four, five, six...
- Alright so we're at our first team practice here.
Try to, try to practicing counting out with these guys.
- We struggled when it came to the lift,
we got a lot of work to put in if we're going
to nail this for the performance.
- So Collin and I just worked on the new cheer that we have,
and we're kind of putting a mix of what
the CheerLA taught us and what Bring It On taught us.
- Hopefully we can pull this off.
- Are you ready to cheer?
- Man it's been long day, it's hard to
find the motivation to cheer.
So we've only had one practice,
and we skipped like four or five days
and this is our second practice,
so hopefully we remember stuff.
- Yeah what comes after this?
Uh, oh!
One and done, and then we're ready, we're ready for it.
- We're really not though.
- So the performance is tomorrow,
and we just did a rehearsal.
- A pre performance if you will.
And I think it went pretty good.
- Yeah.
- There were some hiccups but I feel like
from now until the performance, we'll get it right.
- Yeah, you totally improved.
If any of us mess up it's going to be pretty obvious,
so we all individually have to bring it, bring it on!
(cheers)
- Alright boys, nothing hits the floor, we stick it.
I said
- [Together] Whoom!
(clap)
it's dreaded in here, it must be those
heaters in the atmosphere.
I said B-U-Z-Z,
let's go, Buzzfeed.
- Roll call! I'm captain Carl. Yeah!
- My name is Kayne! Yeah!
- And I am Robert. Wooh!
- And I am Ryan. Yeah!
and I'm still, Edgar.
(crowd cheers
(upbeat music)
- I mean we nailed it.
- Brought the sass and the sexy.
- When you're younger like, cheerleading and peppiness
sounds a little corny, but as an adult,
being positive is a good thing.
- I didn't think that I had to like turn down
my masculinity or anything like that for this.
Like, when it came time to shake the booty,
I was like yo, I'm going to shake the booty on beat.
- I think that doing cheer definitely didn't decrease or
increase my masculinity. I think it made me more self aware.
- Ever since high school, it was difficult for me to,
to perform in front of people.
I don't think it hurts my masculinity,
I think it just makes it more solidified.
- I really do think that more men should try cheerleading.
I feel stronger because of working with these guys.
- I think if you want to like, prove how agile you are,
how strong you are, how quick you are,
how competitive you can be, fuck with cheerleading.
(end music)