The national championships for Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA) and Universal Dance Association (UDA) took place over the weekend in Florida. Navarro College, featured on the Netflix docuseries Cheer, added a new title to their long list of awards. Paige and Oliver won the partner stunt national title!
The rest of the team is preparing for the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA) national championships, which will take place April 5-9 in Daytona Beach.
More national champions this way!
1A coed cheer: University of South Florida
1A all girls cheer: Western Kentucky
1A pom: University of Minnesota
1A jazz: University of Minnesota (note: this is a performance of their competition routine - I posted this version because their black costumes didn't show up well against the blue background at nationals)
1A hip hop: UNLV
Division 1 coed cheer (20 team members max, 5-11 males): Morehead State
Division 1 all girl cheer: Morehead State
Division 1 small coed cheer (20 team members max, 1-4 males): Morehead State
And now for the cheer scandals
First some background
What's the difference between all the different organizations? Originally UCA, NCA, and USA (United Spirit Association) were founded as separate cheerleading organizations but now they are all owned by Varsity Spirit. In terms of competition, UCA and NCA have different rules/requirements for their competitions. NCA tends to be more All-Star cheer, focusing on dance, stunts, and tumbling while UCA is closer to traditional cheerleading and routines.
In addition to the three main cheer organizations, Varsity also owns the two main dance competition organizations UDA and NDA. Varsity has competitions and camps for school teams (college, high school, middle school) as well as competitions for all star and studio teams. In other words, if there's a group of people with any kind of affiliation, there's a Varsity competition for them. Varsity also sells uniforms and owns Varsity TV which airs all of the competitions. If this sounds like a monopoly, three antitrust lawsuits have already been filed against Varsity for that very reason.
Federal lawsuit #1:
The latest scandal is that Varsity is also being named in a federal sex abuse lawsuit representing four female and two male accusers. Scott Foster owned South Carolina-based gym franchise Rockstar Cheer and Dance which was a member of Varsity’s top-tier “Family Plan” rebate program (it's pretty much what it sounds like - participating gyms received a 10% rebate on uniforms, shoes, and accessories purchased through Varsity's different brands) and spent seven figures on uniforms every year. In 2018, videos of Scott drinking with underage cheerleaders surfaced. As a result, he was suspended and one of his gyms was put on probation. The lawsuit alleges that despite his suspension, he was still attending sanctioned events. Scott was reportedly under criminal investigation for having sex with minors in multiple states when he died by suicide in August.
Marlene Cota, a former VP at Varsity, said that she raised concerns about Scott Foster with her superiors but that the company was "disincentivized" to do anything about it because he was a multi-million dollar customer and that "sanctions against him would have potentially hurt [Varsity's] profits.”
The estate of Foster; his wife and business partner, Kathy; Rockstar Cheer and Dance; Varsity Brands and its cheerleading subsidiaries; Bain Capital; Charlesbank Capital Partners, which sold Varsity to Bain in 2018; and the U.S. All Star Federation (USASF), cheer’s long-recognized governing body that was founded and funded by Varsity, are all named as defendants in the lawsuit which accuses Varsity and its affiliated companies of routinely turning a blind eye to credible allegations of sexual misconduct by Foster and other coaches against underage athletes.
What happened in 2009:
In 2009, Mark Warrick Jr., a coach and general manager of Varsity’s Premier Athletics cheerleading gym in Murfreesboro, Tenn., was the subject of misconduct complaints by multiple parents of his cheerleaders. He was accused of emotionally abusive and inappropriate behavior, which included commenting on a cheerleader’s breasts. The mother of a 12-year-old cheerleader alleged that, in addition to her daughter having her face repeatedly licked by the 30-something coach, Warrick would sometimes grab the daughter’s hand and call her his girlfriend. Warrick's mother admitted that he may have done these things but that he often did these things in front of the cheerleaders' parents and that he was "just playing around."
The mother of the 12 year old cheerleader reported Warrick's behavior to his immediate supervisors but she felt that they were not taking her complaints seriously, so next she went to John Newby, the executive vice president and general manager of Varsity’s All Star division, who said there would be an investigation. Warrick was suspended and eventually transferred to a different gym, but it was the gym where the same 12 year old had cheerleading practice with her school team. Her mother told Varsity to make certain he would not be at the facility at the same time her daughter practiced there. In 2011, Varsity agreed to “put in place procedures to minimize the possibility," but he was regularly at the gym at the same time as her daughter. The mother, another parent, and their school cheer coaches all wrote to Varsity multiple times to complain about this. Ultimately, Varsity finally fired him. He later died by suicide in 2014.
Lawsuit filed in South Carolina:
A separate lawsuit filed in South Carolina accuses five Rockstar coaches and an internationally known cheer trainer of sexual abuse involving nine unnamed plaintiffs. The law firm that filed the suit said that they have received over 100 calls from people describing sexual abuse at cheerleading gyms across the country.
Second federal lawsuit:
Another federal lawsuit filed on September 27 accuses an adult coach at Premier Athletics in Knoxville of sexually abusing two of its underage athletes. The complaint also contends that the gym allowed the coach to continue interacting with young athletes despite receiving reports about potential misconduct.
In 2019, a 14 year old cheerleader met 19 year old Dominick Frizzell, a “cheerlebrity” with a large social media following who competed on a prominent All-Stars team, at Premier Athletics in Tennessee. Frizzell began sending the teenager nude photographs, then engaged him in oral sex and other acts. The lawsuit alleges this behavior continued for several years.
In late 2021, Frizzell was in his 20s and was coaching. He began following a 14 year old on Snapchat and allegedly began sending the teen sexually explicit messages, including pictures of his penis and videos of himself masturbating. In May 2022, Frizzell asked the teen to meet him in person and the encounter resulted in oral sex. The teen soon left the gym after the incident.
Another athlete then reported to Premier Athletics’ manager that Frizzell had engaged in sexual misconduct with its underage cheerleaders. An athlete also reported to police and to the industry’s governing body, USASF, that Frizzell had solicited him for sex and sent nude pictures and videos of himself masturbating. USASF deemed Frizzell temporarily ineligible, but he continued to work with underage athletes at Premier Athletics.
In September, one of the plaintiffs went to the police. A few days later, Premier Athletics released a statement saying that upon hearing the allegations, they had terminated Frizzell in June and reported the allegations to USASF and the police at the time. After the lawsuit was filed, Premier Athletics said that neither police nor USASF had substantiated the athlete’s claims but that the gym would “continue to protect the health and safety of its athletes.”
Olympics and NCAA
In the midst of all this, last week the U.S. Olympic Committee accepted cheerleading as an affiliate sport (along with muaythai, lacrosse, cricket, and kickboxing) which puts it a step closer to becoming an Olympic sport in 2028.
In related news, STUNT is an emerging collegiate sport. It's essentially cheerleading without cheering. STUNT doesn't bother with any traditional crowd leading or cheers. Instead STUNT focuses on partner stunts, jumps, tumbling, pyramids, and basket tosses. The NCAA has approved it as an emerging sport for Division II. The NCAA was supposed to vote on approving it for D1 this month but they have tabled the vote. The NCAA's Committee on Women’s Athletics will review STUNT in the spring. A similar sport called Acrobatics and Tumbling (which is not backed by Varsity) already received NCAA approval in 2020. The A&T people say that STUNT is trying to create a sport extremely similar to A&T so that Varsity can get their hands in the game and keep making more money. So are STUNT and A&T the same? These are the promos from each official group:
Acrobatics & Tumbling
STUNT
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
https://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/125106173.html
