Competitive cheerleading has always been a passion of mine. I competed with my gym, TNT Magnum, for 10 years. When I saw we were doing Google My Maps, I knew exactly what my topic was going to be. Over the years I have competed against numerous programs from all over the country but the ones from your home state always stick in your brain. You typically end up competing against each other at more than one competition a year; so naturally some rivalries can arise. Now keep in mind these are not all of the programs in PA, just the ones I personally remember seeing.
Creating this map was super fun for me. I have used My Maps before during my freshman year English course so this was more of a refresher for me. I first started by outlining Pennsylvania; I wanted to show how close and/or far away they were from other states. I chose to use the “star” icon for my points because my topic was All-Star cheer. Each point is colored to match the programs colors although some may be similar. Most of my images were from either Facebook, Twitter, or the gyms website. The links for those images can be found below.
As you can see some of the gyms I remember competing against like Pittsburgh Superstars and Rocket Elite are now owned by bigger name gyms from other states. There has been a lot of that going on in the spirit industry lately; smaller gyms are just not doing as well at competitions as bigger names so they end up selling to said gyms. I’m not exactly sure why this is happening and I’m not entirely sure I like it.
Overall this was a fun project that allowed me venture back in to the world of competitive cheer, as if I ever left…
Photo Sources:
Cheer Factory tinyurl.com/ru596b6, Cheer Tyme tinyurl.com/vq2z8jm,
Dazzle U tinyurl.com/rn24eow, FCA Gems tinyurl.com/ryax9tz,
Cheer Rockets tinyurl.com/ux6z7ej, PA Elite tinyurl.com/vl7vjqn,
PA Heat paheatallstars.com/, Rockstar tinyurl.com/vmdl4q9,
TNT tinyurl.com/t5gh9zx, USA tinyurl.com/rz8w6le,
Valley twitter.com/ValleyElite1/photo, World worldcupphoenix.com/
Bloomsburg Infographics 