The flip-floppers
Five former BC rugby players change their game - and their attitude toward cheerleading
Four months ago, Mike Hunnewell stepped off the rugby pitch for the last time. A heartbreaking loss to Army in the New England Rugby Football Union playoffs forced Hunnewell and the other seniors on the Boston College rugby team to say goodbye to the game that had taken so much of their time, sweat, and blood. After four years, their collegiate athletic careers seemed over.
Then the BC cheerleading team called.
"I thought they had to be joking at first," Hunnewell said. "Apparently they weren't."
Two female cheerleaders were asking if the former rugby winger - a guy accustomed to scrums and tackles - would consider leading cheers and yelling into a cone-shaped megaphone. Now, two months later, Hunnewell and four of his former rugby teammates make up almost two-thirds of BC's male contingent in a sport many of them associated more with a "Saturday Night Live" skit than serious athletics. The five seniors took to the court for just the sixth time last night when BC played Clemson in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
"Our friends were like, 'You guys are idiots,' " said Lou Somma, another rugger turned cheerer.
The rugby players' role on the team was not an intentional one. The cheerleading squad found itself heading into the second half of the basketball season without any male members - "bases," in the sport's jargon. Some had left school, some were studying abroad, and some were just tired of lifting 100-pound girls over their head for an arena of 8,900 to enjoy. So out at a bar one night, seniors Kayte Giorgio and Ashley Walker, the team captains, asked Hunnewell, Somma, and three other former rugby players if they would consider joining the team.
"When the [rugby] season ended, we were all really down. We didn't have practice, didn't have meetings, didn't have games to go to," Somma said. "We laughed but decided this might be fun if we did it together."
Stunt men
Putting their initial hesitance aside, they were the first ones to arrive at the semester's first practice. Lauren Belden, the team's head coach, had no expectations for her new charges. Both Mike Nash and Hunnewell, however, expected their rugby-tuned muscles could handle cheerleading with ease. They were wrong.
"You think you can just throw this 100-pound thing up in the air," Hunnewell said. "But I don't think I got a girl above my hips when the other guys were already putting girls above their head."
The ruggers' nervousness showed at the first few practices, full of more drops than successes. "They were all very intimidated at the first practice because they knew they were strong, so when they threw us they wouldn't let us go because they were scared they would drop us," Walker said. "They came in nervous that they weren't gonna live up to expectations."
Hours spent doing power cleans in the gym, a rugby staple, was as close as possible to many of the stunts, and the rugby team's explosive workouts served them much better than the typical beach workout of bicep curls and bench presses. But the girls had to teach technique from a female perspective, and the rugby players quickly realized there was much more to cheering than pure strength.
"Stunting is a motion you don't experience in any other sport," said Ben Wormser, a captain and three-year member of the team. "A lot of very strong guys have had trouble 'cause it takes so much coordination."
Then, something unexpected happened. The outsized guys more used to scrumming than stunting - cheerleading lingo for the throws and holds between a male and female cheerleader - started to get good, and get good fast.
Belden had never seen a group progress so quickly, nor had she seen guys who so badly wanted to do well. Walker was stunned when the guys got all the way to toss extensions, cheerleading's most basic stunt, in just two practices. It had taken her previous partner - who she said has better technique than the rugby guys - six months to nail the stunt.
"With rugby it's smash mouth," said Somma. "With this it's more control or you'll send a girl tumbling."
The competitive instinct
Ian Ward was the first of the rugby players to nail the hand extension. From there, each guy wanted to keep up with the rest, working quickly to keep pace. They began to call one another "MVP" as they learned new stunts. Belden started getting e-mails from the rugby players asking for more practices, a first for her in three years at BC, and ended up going in on several Sundays to help them move to more advanced stunts.
"The guys would call us on a Saturday morning and ask if we could practice their back flips," Walker said. "Who practices on a Saturday morning?"
A friendly but intense competition among the players is one direct carry-over from the rugby pitch. Their seriousness is evident at practice. As Karl Danso, another former rugger, works on an assisted side flip, his female charge can only laugh as she is tossed about by his jerky technique. But Danso is not laughing. Instead, his face is determined, his lips pursed, and his eyes locked on the task at hand. Minutes later, Hunnewell barely hides his disappointment when his forearms wobble and his partner has to struggle to stay in the air. Ward's arms buckle on a toss extension, sending a girl ungracefully to the ground.
But as practice comes to an end, the lightness the guys bring to the team returns. As Usher's "Yeah" blares from the exercise class on the court next door, the guys pull out their best dance moves: Danso does the Shopping Cart and Hunnewell writhes on the floor in his best rendition of the Worm. When that song was released in 2004, their senior year of high school, none would have even considered cheerleading. Now they were competing to be the best male cheerleader.
"If we were gonna do this, we weren't gonna [stink] at it," Hunnewell said. "It's a competition thing between us. The worst feeling is when the crowd goes 'Oooh' after you messed something up. I hate that."
Proving themselves
Among ACC schools, BC's cheer program is small. Three years ago, the coed team had just two male cheerleaders - and only one of them could stunt. North Carolina State has enough guys to fill two coed teams. Now, with the help of the rugby players, BC has an almost 50-50 ratio on its coed team: eight guys to nine girls.
"It's tough to get guys, simply for the fact that most people don't understand just how much athleticism is involved," Belden said. "These are visibly big guys, so now you can tell it requires real athleticism."
Cheering is not a sacrifice for the rugby players. The guys get loads of BC athletic gear, not to mention courtside seats at every BC game. And for what Belden calls these "natural showmen," it's clear they enjoy the limelight that has descended upon them.
As Mettalica's "Enter Sandman" blares over the Conte Forum speakers before the BC basketball team takes on No. 2-ranked University of North Carolina, Nash and Danso look more like Randy Moss and Donté Stallworth celebrating a touchdown than cheerleaders as they leap and smack each other with a shoulder bump - their signature celebration. Later, "Shipping Up to Boston" inspires an on-court Jonathan Papelbon impersonation from Nash. During the "Burrito Toss," they seem to be in competition to launch their foil-wrapped Qdoba T-shirts the farthest.
"The adrenaline's going, man," Hunnewell said at halftime of the UNC game. "Did they show us on TV?"
"We have all these fans now. Six thousand people cheering. We always wanted it but never had that kind of support with rugby," Nash said. "In rugby you have to be focused, in the zone, all the time. When we're cheering we get to have fun."
In many ways, the experience has tamed the ruggers' most violent tendencies. Their brute strength no longer serves them as well as an attention to technical detail and finesse. After one successful timeout routine, Nash carries his partner, Heather Jones, off the court in both arms as if chivalrously escorting her across a pool of water.
Belden has told the guys - only partially in jest - to make it mandatory for senior rugby players to join the cheer squad in the second semester. But she is still fighting an uphill battle. After all, can guys used to playing one of the most violent games on the planet even consider cheerleading a sport?
"Well," said Hunnewell, sweating and breathing heavily during a break from practice. "I'm definitely giving it more consideration."
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