Teryn Bristow is back flying with her Prairie Fire Cheerleading Senior Elite Diva team and feeling good about taking to the air again just a couple months after suffering a nasty injury while performing a stunt.
“It definitely scared me, but I got my courage back and got into it again,” said Teryn, a 13-year-old Grade 8 student at Loreburn Central School. “Now I feel comfortable. I trust my bases and I know that they’re going to catch me.”
Teryn suffered the injury during a “full out” practice with her stunt group in late January at the Prairie Fire Cheerleading gym in Saskatoon. She was flying in the air and doing a back flip into the stunt when an arm got caught and the rotation on her back flip stopped.
The young Loreburn flyer fell face first onto the mat with her feet arching over her head the wrong way. She was rushed to the emergency room at the Royal University Hospital and fitted into a neck brace.
“I was in the emergency room from 7 p.m. till 12:30 a.m.,” she said. “I took six weeks off from that injury because I had pinched nerves. I messed up my neck a bit and my back. I’ve just healed recently, so now I’m back into it.”
She made it back in time to help the Level 4 Senior team finish second at the ACE-All Star Cheer Extravaganza competition in Edmonton April 12 where she took her rightful place as the top of her stunt group.
Teryn said a top is the girl in a five-person stunt group that is thrown into the air. She said there are also two bases in a group who hold the top along with a third who stays behind the group to catch the top in case she falls and a fourth who stands in front to make sure the top doesn’t have a face fall.
“I like flying,” she said. “You get to do some cool things in the air and you get all the attention when you’re in a competition. You get to smile and sing to the music and it’s really fun.”
The All Star Cheer Extravaganza brought the 2013-2014 competitive part of the cheerleading season, which also saw the team perform at a competition in Anaheim, California, to a close for the Prairie Fire Cheerleading Senior Elite Diva team. Teryn is the youngest athlete in the 19-member club, which also includes tumbling, jumping and dancing sections in addition to the stunt group.
These four sections all take the stage in a competition to perform a two-and-a-half minute routine. To get ready for these demanding minutes on stage, the team participates in three two-and-a-half hour practices each week during the competitive season and also takes part in spring and summer training when not in competition.
To read more please see the April 21 print edition of The Davidson Leader.