Photos by Ralph Freso
It’s awe-inspiring to see athletes literally in flight on the basketball floor.
We’re not talking dunks here but a team maneuver.
Two “bases” across from each other and a “back spot” form a triangle of trust. Hands locked, they squat and throw a typically tiny fourth team member (“flyer”) high into the air, and that’s when it gets fun. The flyer spins and flips until she, sometime in the near future, gracefully falls into those waiting hands.
It’s called a basket toss. Megan Bamford, assistant coach of Cheer at Grand Canyon University, loves to teach it – and has done it a time or two in her illustrious career.
“It’s a lot of trial and error, let me tell you,” she said. “Sometimes, you get lost in the air, and you don’t really know where you’re going. Luckily, I’ve always had bases that I’ve trusted, and they’ve always managed to catch me, even if it's by my ponytail or something.”
Bamford's skills at acrobatics and tumbling as a national champion has helped a team of coaches who bring not only the high-spirited atmosphere fans have seen at basketball games but the technical athleticism that has GCU primed for this weekend’s Universal Cheerleaders Association College Nationals competition in Orlando, Florida.
“There’s not a person at nationals who doesn’t know her and come up to her because she is so involved in the industry,” said GCU head coach Kori Boe, who brought her own expertise last year as a former gymnast and a cheerleader at Indiana. “That’s what makes her so great here. She’s able to bring all that knowledge from her experience.
“She’s also got a great way of preparing the athletes physically but tying in the mental side of it as well. Performing not so long ago, she’s able to relate to them.”
GCU has a solid reputation, winning the Game Day title at nationals four straight years, a competition that relies on game presentation and involves all of the Spirit Programs, including Dance, Thundering Heard Pep Band and Thunder. But the goal this year is to again win the Small Coed Division I title, which they did in 2021, one that involves judging based more on those stunts and acrobatics that Bamford relishes.
In a recent practice, Bamford’s eyes were intent on every move, as the athletes bounced through the routine, a backhand spring or hand-in-hand, when a flyer flips from a handstand to feet-to-hands on the outstretched arms of the base – flying impossibly blind with absolute body control.
The team of Boe, Bamford and skills coach Leonardo Borjas have a whiteboard with those skills, checked off and worked on in four-hour practices, over and over and over.
“We made it clear to them so it doesn’t feel like a guessing game what they need to work on,” Bamford said. “We’ve added more difficulty.”
It’s a lot of sweat and hard work and weight training.
“Kori is a lover, and I can be more of a tough lover. Sometimes I will get on the kids and let her worry about the big picture,” Bamford said. “I also think Leo, our skills coach, helped bring so much, too. He’s been a national champion. We call ourselves the 'dream team.' We know it’s cheesy, but I really think we’ve helped develop that mindset with the athletes this year.”
Bamford took up gymnastics at age 4 in her native southern California, got into cheerleading by 10 and all-stars clubs before joining the team at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California.
But she always told her mom she would someday be a college coach. So it was no surprise that after cheering for two years at the University of Tennessee and absorbing all the craziness of game day at Neyland Stadium that she wanted to focus on technique and joined the University of Oregon acrobatics and tumbling team, which won back-to-back national championships.
She’s also a national champion in National Cheer Association competition and a world medalist. But after coaching at King University, she returned to California, coached a high school team and began work as the Varsity Spirit director for Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. Varsity is the dominant global division organizing competitions and camps.
Then one day at the airport, she got a call from Boe about coaching at GCU.
“I stopped dead on the sidewalk. It’s a program that is really big out here on the West Coast. I was like, I have to take it,” she said.
She had heard of the Havocs and even, in major colleges, had never experienced anything like the atmosphere they bring, but she had the chops as a recent performer in club all-star teams that she could help elevate the skills of those leading the cheers.
“As soon as she walked in, she was confident and knew us and how to make us great,” said senior Allie Owen.
What she saw at GCU was surprising.
“I love these athletes. They’re the most polite people I’ve ever met. You can’t even get mad at them because they are, ‘Thank you, coach! And I’m saying, ‘You’re welcome. Wait, why did I just say you’re welcome?’”
But she is known as a taskmaster, checking off that whiteboard of stunts.
“The athletes have more ownership of what they’re doing and a realization that they can do this routine. We just have to be able to mentally flip that switch, lock in and focus, or we’re not going to be able to peak out on that national score like we want to.”
Often, she is so intent on her instructions that she demonstrates the skill right in practice, literally flipping in the air while still giving verbal instruction.
“She understands what we go through, and that helps a lot, knowing where we are coming from. She’s done it at a high level,” said junior John Guevara, one of 15 males (the most ever) on the team of 66. “If there’s something we need help on, she’ll be like, OK, and put on her shoes on and jump in and do it.”
The stunts are elevated each year, so the athletes who are recruited from across the country won’t be just going to Florida to chant Lopes Up. Twenty are picked for the Small Co-Ed division and are locked in tight.
“There’s no professional cheerleading really – the NFL is mainly dancers – so for them, this is their version of the Super Bowl, the highlight of their career,” Bamford said
This coach will be watching their every highlight closely.
“We spend so much time with them, we are like their second parent, but I love to get to shape them and what they can become as athletes and humans. I love the nitty-gritty details of teaching skills and watching them learn it. I’ve always wanted to be that person that helps somebody get better.”
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
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