Three Cheers for Pop Warner Cheerleaders

When most people think of football, cheerleaders aren’t always the first thing that crosses their minds. Thoughts go right to certain players, teams or great plays that have happened in the past.

But for the Grafton Chiefs Pop Warner League, the football and cheerleading go-hand-in-hand.

“The cheering goes right along with the football,” said Alex Chiuchiolo, vice president and cheer coordinator of cheering for Grafton Pop Warner. “It has been around the same amount of time (as football) and we kind of can’t go without each other.''

Just like the football program, the ages of cheering range from 5 to 12, broken down into just three divisions, Tiny Mites, Mighty Mites and PeeWee, due to low numbers this season.

In the Tiny Mite division, the ages range from 5 to 7; the Mighty Mites, from 8 to new 9-years-old and the PeeWee, from veteran 9-year-olds to 12-year-olds.

Though there are only 27 girls in the program this year, they have made great progress over the past five years since Chiuchiolo started to get involved, going to Regionals and finishing first and second place in fun competitions, or FunComps.

“They’ve done really well and worked really hard,” said Chiuchiolo. “The girls love it and it’s great to have the camaraderie between the girls; they enjoy helping each other, which is great to see.”

When the program kicked off its season in August, the girls practiced four nights a week in South Grafton alongside the football teams. For the first two weeks the girls went through a serious of stretching and warm-ups to prepare themselves physically for the jumps, folds, cradling and cartwheeling to come.

“We have to do a lot of stretching and warm-ups because we have to stretch before we can actually start to stunt or anything because it is all about the safety of the girls,” said Chiuchiolo. “Once school starts we end up going inside to practice at the Municipal Center in town and we also practice at the high school.”

Though high school is a long ways off for some of the girls, the Grafton Pop Warner’s cheering program is actively involved with the high school’s cheering program.

Most years, the cheering squad will hold a clinic or a pep rally with the Pop Warner cheerleaders and try to teach them and show them things that they will eventually be learning at the high school level.

“We’ve always tried to do something with the high schoolers, whether it is a clinic or a pep rally,” said Chiuchiolo. “They’re great with helping us out and also allowing us to use their mats'' on Thursday nights for practice.

Some of the high school cheerleaders got their start through the Pop Warner Cheering and have experienced quite a bit of success since then as seen throughout the Grafton High School gym. They recently went to Florida for competitions and have truly given the younger cheerers something to look forward to when they enter the high school.

As for now, the young cheerleaders will have to set their sights on winning the FunComp, which is essentially a fundraising competition in which the girls try to raise money, and the Springfield competition, which takes place at Springfield Mass Mutual Center.

The Springfield competition kicks off the local competition. If the cheerleaders from the Grafton Chiefs Pop Warner place, they go on to the regionals and then the qualifiers and, they hope, to the ultimate level in Florida. 

Though the Grafton Pop Warner is a great experience for both football and cheerleaders alike, the program also focuses a lot on academics and keeping kids involved in the classroom just as much as they are involved out on the field or in the gym.

There are also scholarships given out to certain players that give back to the community or hold above a 96 grade point average. “We [as coaches] need to check up at the school and make sure that they’re doing scholastically what they need to be doing [hold a 70 average] to be on the football teams or the cheerleading teams, so that’s a huge thing,” said Chiuchiolo. “It’s just a really good organization.”

The Grafton Chiefs Pop Warner cheering is set to kick off its FunComp Oct. 16 and is hopeful that its run to Disney World begins on Oct. 23 as the local competitions kick off at the Springfield Mass Mutual Center.