Dr. Button-Ervin is in her fifth year as the head coach of the intercollegiate cheer program at Alfred University. The program’s first and only head coach has led the Saxons to one of the top cheerleading programs in the Northeast region. The Alfred cheer program recently qualified for the National Cheerleading Association National Championship Competition.
Coach Button-Ervin talks about cheer as a sport, how she’s developed the cheer program, and the future goals for the Saxons cheerleading program.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s been the biggest challenge taking over a very new program at Alfred?
Early on figuring out what our program was going to look like; when cheer was a club, they did primarily sideline work- which is great. One of the things we get pushback from is not doing sideline things anymore. So, in our early years, we were trying to do both sideline cheer and compete. That meant our cheerleaders were in season from before school started in August through April. Very few teams on campus go through that. I feel pretty confident in what our program looks like now. I’m happy that we are a competition team that can focus on our own work and skills in practice consistently throughout both semesters. The other key challenge has been advocacy- in all ways. Our admin has never been super familiar with cheer. That’s not their fault, it’s just that cheer isn’t super common to be in an athletic department. It’s been a lot of explaining what we need and how we’re different from other sports.
Some people might say cheer isn’t a real sport, what do you say to the people with that mindset?
My gut says bullshit. We’re throwing humans in the air. But, usually, I try to be really respectful and tactful when I talk to people. Sometimes I give it back to them like, “What is a sport? How do you define a sport? What is an athlete? What’s athleticism?” Almost always people’s definitions can fit what we do into it. I can say, “Oh we run, oh we condition, we’re in the weight room twice a week.” You know we don’t have a ball or something but we have humans. So I usually ask for their opinions and their perspective. I do think many people who think cheerleading isn’t a sport have not seen competitive cheerleading. I think it’s hard when you really see a competition that fights against it.
How have you developed this program to be able to compete against some of the best teams in the country?
One step at a time. I feel really confident in my stunting- which is a really big chunk of our scoring sheets. So when I recruit, the biggest thing I kind of look at is their stunting abilities. They have to send me videos of their stunting skills. The last two years our downfall, prior to this year was our tumbling. So this last recruiting cycle I really, really honed in on tumblers. We also invest in going to a tumbling gym in Arkport. We travel once a week to Arkport to work on our tumbling. I’ve advocated heavily to have that funding so that we can go somewhere and make sure that we can get tumbling because that is not my coaching expertise. I’ve really focused on every year, upping the ante; we’ll do a film at the beginning of the year to say this is where we were last year, where can we get? We work towards those skills right away in the fall semester. Every year we’re bumping up a couple of levels. In my first year of recruiting, I was like, “Okay, we’re in our infancy. I need people that are willing to grow with us,” and then the next year I was like, “We’re toddlers now, we’re getting our feet wet and starting to be competitive.” Last year I was like, “We’re in adolescence, we’ve jumped from childhood and we’re in adolescence, we are so close to being a competitive college program.” This year I’m telling recruits, “We are a legitimate college team.” In five years we’ve just been pushing the level a little bit higher and now we’re finally there.
In some of the competitions, you’ve dealt with a girl getting injured causing you to change things up days before competition. How do you and the girls in the program adapt to those types of challenges to still compete in those competitions?
If I could say one thing about Alfred Cheer, through all the years with different people, it’s the ability to handle adversity; it’s unbelievable. No one knows when we go on the mat what might’ve happened two days before. Last year in our second to last competition, Chloe Fox broke her hand at practice the day before the competition. Our trainer was like, “I think she’s ok, I think it’s just a jam. We’ll tape her up.” She competed and came off the mat like, “This is a real problem.” People were standing on her hand which turned out to be broken. The ultimate goal is to have a big enough team–ideally 24-28 athletes–so we can have true alternates in case of injury. Kind of like someone coming in off the bench. We’re not there yet numbers-wise, but we’re close. This year we have 17 athletes; I have 12-14 in stunts, so this year we’re in a better position when there’s an injury. I think that’s why we’ve had more success this year. We had a flier not completely recovered and out on a last minute injury last week, and I was able to pop someone into that spot. It wasn’t perfect; I’m sure the girls weren’t thrilled that it wasn’t perfect, but they did it because I was able to make that adjustment. This team, and all teams prior have been really adaptable. I think the mindset is, “We have to do it, and so we’re going to figure it out.”
You girls are heading to Daytona this year for the National Championship Competition. How do you plan on keeping your team comfortable and relaxed when you’re going to such a big competition?
I think going to Daytona will be a little easier with the nerves only because there will be so many other athletes around that also feel really similarly, but also excited. Getting on the plane, flying in, getting to the BNB, that’s all going to be so exciting that I think will help a little bit with the nerves. What I’ve found is that my team tends to be most present in the practice before we compete- which makes me unsettled. But, we get on the bus to go to a competition and they’re all so excited and ready to go. I’m like, “Where did this come from? Yesterday you were all, like, scared and miserable.” So whatever they’re doing on their ends they’re really good at picking up the energy when it’s comp day. Obviously, in Daytona it’s a much bigger arena, it’s going to be streamed live nationally, kind of a big deal, so I think the nerves are going to be different there, but they won’t be able to see the crowd as much and so I think it’ll just be reiterating this is what we always do.
What can we look for or what’s next for Alfred cheer?
So this year, our main goal was to qualify for Daytona. After we qualified I looked through the list of teams that competed in our division last year, and was like, “I think we’re going to be competitive.” Initially, it was like qualifying and don’t come in last place. There are 19 teams in our division- a huge division- but we’ll come home at least the top 19 in the country so I’ll take it. But, our goal is to be in the top 10 this year. Moving into next year, our goal is to increase our numbers; we have some pretty strong recruits coming in so far. My anchor is still to get to that 24, so we can have more of a buffer for injuries and illness. That’s one thing, and then competitively, I think we’ll absolutely qualify for Daytona again; we’ve got the core to get us there again. The goal for next year is to be in the top 5! So we’ll be on the big stage and actually get a legit trophy.