LAKELAND, Fla. \u2014\u00a0The Central Florida Sharks cheerleading program started two years ago. It has grown and now has close to 80 cheerleaders competing across multiple age groups.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
The Central Florida Sharks are a youth recreation cheerleading program with four team across multiple age divisions
\n
In the second year of the program, the Sharks had three teams compete at the\u00a0Youth Cheer Globals competition
\n
All three teams earned a bronze medal at the Globals competition<\/p>\n
They have cheerleaders on four teams, ages 4 to 15. In just their second year, three teams traveled to New Jersey to compete at the Youth Cheerleading Globals competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is everything. I would have never imagined that we would have gone this far and we’re still growing. It’s very overwhelming. But in such a good way. We pour into these athletes as much as we can, and we truly love each and every one of them,\u201d Central Florida Sharks Vice President Courtney Brown said.<\/p>\n
The Sharks are a competitive recreation team that wanted to go beyond cheering at football games. They practice two nights a week throughout their season to prepare for competitions on the weekends.<\/p>\n
Central Florida Sharks cheerleader Stella Hernandez has fallen in love with the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve really grown since then. And I think that this is my new sport. I love it,” Hernandez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s been really fun cheering for the Sharks. I’ve met so many new people and they have become like my best friends,\u201d Sharks cheerleader Saylor Porter said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are 77 incredible human beings. Just to see them come, show up, be determined. They’re growing on and off the mat is just absolutely incredible,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
All three of the Sharks\u2019 teams earned bronze at the Global Cheerleading Competition, proving they are some of the best cheerleaders in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuper fun and challenging at cheerleading because we always learn new things that I haven’t learned yet,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m so excited to be going with this team because everybody truly cares and is really putting (in) their best effort,\u201d Hernandez said.<\/p>\n
Their goal is to grow and continue to improve to get back to the big stage once again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAKELAND, Fla. \u2014\u00a0The Central Florida Sharks cheerleading program started two years ago. It has grown and now has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1011,1238,274,1236,1190,115,139,141,140,110,1746,278,835],"class_list":["post-223396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-florida-sports","tag-human-interest","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-sports","tag-thomas-cook","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}