Tuks' hip hop cheerleading team impressed with the way they won gold at USSA Champs

An internet search will show that a hip hop cheerleading competition routine entails precision, teamwork, and commitment, among other things.

If you are a layman, a logical conclusion would be to think that it would take weeks and weeks of practice to get eighteen cheerleading athletes to be in absolute synch in a two-minute and 30-second routine. Think about it - every athlete executes the same movement every second.

The athletes of Tuks's hip hop team managed to exactly that during the USSA Cheerleading championships. That led to them winning the gold medal. What is impressive about this is that it did not take them weeks and weeks to get their act together.

"Amazing" is the word used by the team's coach, Sipesihle Ngamlana, to describe the team's performance. Adding that "We only started the choreography the week of the event. It looked like a lot of pressure, but the way the team handled it was really incredible. We were able to produce a gold medal-winning performance from four days of hard work and consistency."

As I did not know anything about hip hop cheerleading, I had to ask what it entails. This is how Ngamlana explained it.

"Regarding the tournament, the maximum for the large groups was 24, and the minimum was 12. The one thing that makes a dance crew really great is the number of people. The more people, the better it looks because if you could see every single person doing the same at the same time, it looks magnificent. You could stop all of them and take pictures of each and every person, and everyone would still be doing the same thing behind or next to the person.

"We decided to go for a street routine. I had to give a shout to Lutendo Tshikwatamba, a choreographer, for assistance, as I am not as experienced with street when it comes to hip hop. He really did a lot with the team. Every athlete went all out and gave their all in every single move they made. You could see that they were enjoying it. That was good. When it comes to dancing, you have to enjoy every single thing that you are doing, or else it feels like a burden.

"We decided to keep our routine under three minutes. In dance, a thirty-second routine can take a lot of hours to rehearse because of how much movement is done within those thirty seconds. If your routine is longer than three minutes, it turns into an exercise. Which dance actually is, if you think about it. So we capped our routine. Still managing to do as much as possible within the two minutes and thirty seconds we have in our performances."

Out of curiosity, how fit do you have to be to do hip hop cheerleading?

"It's very subjective because you would have to look at the person, the individual. Overall, you need to be reasonably fit since there's a lot of movement involved. There is also a certain level of flexibility required to do moves."