How Cheerleading Became So Acrobatic, Dangerous and Popular
Members of the Valley Elite All Stars in Allentown, Pa., which is sending an elite team to Varsity Spirit events to try to earn a spot in the Cheerleading Worlds. Credit... Dina Litovsky for The New York Times
Nikki Jennings started cheering when she was 4 years old. She was small and flexible and became a flyer, a human baton spinning and twisting through the air before being caught by teammates. Until sometimes she wasn’t: She got her first concussion in the third grade.
Jennings was a budding star, and at 13 she joined a competitive gym called Rockstar Cheer in Naples, Fla. She was the golden child of her coach, Carlos Realpe — even if he sometimes pushed her too hard. Like when he ran practices late into the evening on school nights. Or when Jennings pulled a hamstring and he threatened her position on the team unless she pounded ibuprofen and powered through the pain. Or when he screamed and threw shoes and water bottles. (Realpe denies throwing things; two other team members supported Jennings’s account.) Parents of other children complained about Realpe’s coaching style, but Jennings brushed it off.
Jennings’s family moved to Georgia, and after her new team there won the Cheerleading Worlds in 2019, she became a minor “cheerlebrity,” modeling uniforms and taking photos with little girls who waited in line to meet her. That visibility led to a scholarship to cheer at the University of Hawaii, where she clocked up to 50 hours a week in training, games, hair and makeup and late-night, punishing drills after making mistakes on the field. According to Jennings, her coach, Mike Keolaokalani Baker, insulted his athletes when the team performed poorly. Jennings had begun swimsuit modeling, and she told a friend at the time that Baker said her Instagram feed looked as if she was prepping for an OnlyFans career. (Baker denied making that comment. He said the team did not typically practice and perform more than 20 hours a week; another cheerleader supported Jennings’s memory.)
