After almost a year on the sidelines, the cheerleading team has returned to the field this fall. Last year, the team was thrown into turmoil when its former coach left and the University hired a student replacement - rather than a professional - to lead the team, resulting in many members leaving the squad. This year a revamped cheerleading team, led by a professional coach and including many new members, appears to have overcome last year's challenges.
Shirley Corio, who also coaches a competitive professional cheerleading team, was hired as the cheerleading coordinator this semester. Attempts to find a new coach began in August 2006, after the former coach left the squad and moved to Boston. "I found (Corio) that summer online," said captain Jasmine Plummer '08. "I searched cheerleading teams in Rhode Island, and her name came up. I e-mailed her saying, 'We have no coach and we could really use somebody to help us out.' "
Corio, who worked as a volunteer for the squad starting in the spring, is officially considered an independent contractor of the University and is not a University employee, according to Rick Merriam, assistant athletic director for marketing.
"She gets paid to perform the duties that we have outlined as the cheerleading coordinator, but she does not get University benefits. She does not keep regular office hours, but she is paid by the University," Merriam said.
Veronica Lowe '09, who rejoined the squad this semester after not cheering last fall and taking a leave of absence from Brown in the spring, said she is enthusiastic about the change in coaching. "I felt as if the whole coaching situation just held me back a little from being more involved" in the squad last year, Lowe said. "She is a wonderful coach. ... We couldn't ask for better."
Though the squad had only between six and 10 members last year, the team has recovered to its former strength of 20 cheerleaders, consisting mostly of freshmen and sophomores with one junior and one senior.
Though some of the new members have little or no experience in cheerleading, they are all excited to learn, Lowe said. "For the most part we have people on the team who are into athletics, who have done gymnastics," she said, adding that a few were cheerleaders in middle school or high school.
Lowe and Plummer both voiced high hopes for the team's future. "When I was a freshman, we were Ivy League champs, and it was really exciting, and now we're back to the way it was," Lowe said, adding that the squad is now traveling with varsity teams to road games. "It's really nice that teams are saying 'can you be here for us' again," she added.
The squad performed its first halftime show this year at the football team's game against the University of Pennsylvania on Saturday, and it will perform another at the home game Nov. 10 against Dartmouth, according to Plummer. The squad may also go to cheerleading competitions in the future.
The need for a new coach arose more than a year and a half ago after former coach Kristin Capasso left in the spring of 2006. The University originally asked the team's three captains at the time to become coaches, but they declined because they felt they did not have enough experience. Athletics officials then tapped Cindy Vuittonet '07 as the new coach.
"The athletics department hired a student to be the coach last year, which was problematic because you need certain certifications to be a cheerleading coach, and she didn't have any," Plummer said.
According to Merriam, the change in coaching was due to a change in classification by the University's human resources department. "It was determined early last fall that the classification of that cheerleading coordinator position had to change from what it had been previously and that we could only either hire a volunteer or hire a student, which is what we ended up doing last year, when we hired Cindy," he said.
After Vuittonet was hired as coach, several members left the squad and the captains handed out flyers at a football game protesting the change in coaching. Two of the captains involved were later asked to leave the squad. "Some members didn't want to be a part of the team when they felt so disrespected by the University," Plummer said.
Both Lowe and Plummer said that the team is moving on from the difficulties of last year, however. "The team works hard and is bigger and better," Lowe wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
