Oregon-Davis graduate, Kelsey Minix, recently participated in the National Cheerleading competition at Disney World. She is on the cheer squad at Purdue University. Minix talked about the competition that was held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Center at Disney World.
“The routine is two minutes and 30 seconds long and it can’t be any longer than that,” said Minix. “There’s two different portions of music which is fast-paced and many skills set to it. Every school then does a cheer that you would do at a game. There’s a lot of tumbling, partner stunts, pyramids, basket tosses and so many things packed into two minutes and 30 seconds.”
There are two squads at Purdue and two separate teams. One is a co-ed team of 13 men and 13 women, and the second is an all-woman team of 25. The squads rotate through athletic games such as volleyball and basketball. All cheerleaders, though, cheer at the home football games. We asked Kelsey about cheerleading at a major university.
“The life of a cheerleader at Purdue is very chaotic. We have to do study tables every single week and we have workouts at 6:00 a.m. twice or three times a week. There are appearances we have to do at special events. At the same time, it’s a lot of fun. There are so many things we get to experience.”
We asked Kelsey about transferring from one rival school to another.
“I’ve had a lot of people tell me that’s probably never been done where someone changes like that. I am a lot happier here at Purdue. I wanted to be closer to home. When I was at IU, it took me four hours to get home and now it only takes an hour and a half.”
Kelsey is the daughter of Brenda and Clayton Minix.
Another cheerleader with local ties participated for I.U. at the nationals and that was Jimmy Krause of Knox.
Photos provided.
