Choreographer and coach Jamie Parrish talks candidly about his Georgia All-Stars’ comeback, the trend he would most like to see catch on this season and what he doesn’t miss about owning a gym.
By Jennifer Renée Smith
all photos courtesy of Jamie Parrish
CBN Dec/Jan 2009
Our uniforms are not a fashion statement as much as a functional choreography tool.”
In an industry filled with multi-hyphenates, Jamie Parrish is in a class all his own. The trendsetting choreographer-coach-judge-mentor-performer-designer- and one-time owner of the highly decorated Georgia All-Stars is coming back for a second helping of nail biting competition this season, a year after closing the doors to the iconic gym he launched in 1991.
Although he didn’t completely leave the industry behind during his self-induced hiatus from heading up his own program—he choreographed cheer and dance routines for outside clients, made appearances to support athletes at various competitions and coached the Stingray Allstars’ large coed team—it was enough of a break for him to gain a new perspective on what he would do differently if he were to make a fresh start. Read on to get the inside scoop on how Parrish is attempting to do just that with the reintroduction of two Georgia teams that’ll proudly be splashing the mat with the color purple once again.
CBN: How has everything been going with your relaunch since your team practices began in May?
Jamie Parrish: Awesome, awesome, awesome. We’re really having a lot of fun.
CBN: What are you most excited about?
Parrish: I’ve been doing choreography this summer, and there’s a lot of good coed teams this year. I’m looking forward to seeing my teams compete.
CBN: Do you have specific strategies for your revamped program?
Parrish: We only have a staff of three, so we just want to keep it really small and come back as strong as we can in the divisions we’re in. Right now, we have a level 4 coed and a level 5 medium coed. It’s our hope that we’ll be able to compete the medium coed in large coed in a few competitions to try to get a bid to Worlds. I’m not expecting to compete large coed until the end of the year though.
My level 5 team provides me with the opportunity to shop kids to college programs. In order to have a strong level 5 team year- to- year, you have to have at least one level 4 team to feed into it. I’m not saying that in the future we want to add one more team or two more teams, but I definitely don’t want to make Georgia All-Stars a numbers game. You’ve probably heard of a boutique hotel, well we want to be like a boutique gym. We had a lot of level 5s try out who didn’t make the team who we could have put on a different team. But we just felt that it was going to be in our best interest to keep it very small—especially for the first year—then maybe next year expand a tiny bit.
CBN: Where can we expect to see your teams perform this year?
Parrish: We’re going to All-Star Challenge’s Battle Under the Big Top (our first competition), NCA All-Star Nationals, CHEERSPORT, UCA All-Star Nationals and Spirit Sports’ Battle at the Beach.
CBN: Was there any aspect of running a gym that you missed during your hiatus?
Parrish: How about I tell you what I [ital: didn’t] miss: 1) classes 2) rent 3) payroll. It’s nice not owning a gym right now. Running one really was my least favorite part of this whole industry. Right now, I sublet space from a gymnastics center in Peachtree City and it’s so simple for me, because basically the kids pay coaching fees to the team mom, I pay a percentage of that to the facility and they take care of the insurance, the rent and their own classes. Since we’ve become part of their program, their cheer classes have tripled because of our name. It’s a win-win situation, because we can pull from the kids who’re taking classes, and they, because of the Georgia name, have increased their enrollment. We’re splitting the rent, and the time that they need the space for their gymnastics clients is right after school. Our kids usually have regular cheerleading practice for school, so we come in later in the evening—filling some dead space that wouldn’t normally be used. In order to make a gym successful, you really have to have a strong class and school program, and that’s just not what I’m about anymore. I’m too old to flip kids, and I’m just in this part-time to keep my foot in the door and to have a creative outlet to try new things. I also enjoy helping my cheerleaders find the college team that’s right for them.
CBN: Quite a few of your former all-star athletes have gone on to cheer with prestigious collegiate cheer programs. How have you helped them make the transition?
Parrish: Actually, I’d say that 95 percent of our cheerleaders also cheer for their schools, so most of my all-star athletes have some sideline experience. Georgia is a huge cheerleading state, and most people don’t realize that because we’re unfortunately not allowed to travel outside of the state for Nationals. If we were, we would probably dominate high school nationals. The general cheer public thinks Kentucky is a big powerhouse, but Georgia has way stronger high school programs. In my opinion, our tumbling is more elite than what I’ve seen at the other State Championships. That being said, I think we’re just now hitting that point in all-star cheerleading where kids have grown up in the gym since they were minis and they’re getting into high school and have no intention or desire to cheer on the sidelines. I think we cut off our nose to spite our — I was looking at an old tape from ’92 and the motions and the sharpness of those cheerleaders killed the kids today in terms of tightness. School cheerleading helps them to develop that rigid sharpness that once was and is no longer. I think it would be nice if we could get them to be a little cleaner on the floor.
CBN: In the past, Georgia All-Stars was known for setting innovative trends, especially in the way of appearance. Are you looking to set any new ones with your new teams this season?
Parrish: What we’ve tried to do this year is to add more coverage. When I’m at a cocktail party or social event and I tell people what I do, I would say the number one thing out of somebody’s mouth is, “my daughter wants to cheer, but as a parent, I’m not comfortable with her wearing a midriff top at 6 years old.” So we’ve got to realize that parents in general 
don’t want to see their child at an awkward body stage running around showing their belly.
Females in general—and cheerleaders especially—have so much pressure on them: they’re body conscious, and they’re seeing airbrushed pictures in Seventeen magazine and they think they have to be just like those girls.
Our uniforms this year are longer and creatively show some flash in other places. We opened up the shoulders instead and made that area the focal point of the design. We were the first team to ever do collars on a uniform, so we went back to our traditional collar but it’s done in a different way. Instead of a full top like we used to, we put it on a halter. We were one of the first programs to do the bling-bling, but we decided this year to get away from that. Our uniforms have absolutely no sparkles—I think it’s a trend that’s on its way out. Everything runs in cycles and I just want to be ahead of the curve, so we got rid of all of the glitter and sparkle and went back to a bright, popping purple. I was looking at one of our uniforms on an old tape the other day from before we went to all the bling-bling and the cleanliness and the lines that you saw were really sharp and visually effective. The shiny stuff is a bit distracting, so I wanted to take it back to more of a basic design strictly for the eye. It’s not a fashion statement as much as it’s a functional choreography tool.
CBN: You’re a judge yourself, so I’m sure you have a little bit better perspective than coaches who aren’t.
Parrish: Yes, I judge, do choreography and I’m a coach, so it’s kind of weird because sometimes I’ll put a routine together and will be happy with movements, but then when I’m in practice and I have the cheerleaders wear their uniforms and do the exact same choreography, I feel like sometimes the uniforms don’t complement the movements. I was watching a high school team perform on YouTube recently, and the girls were wearing uniforms in which one arm was red and one arm was blue. The symmetry of their motions looked horrible because of that. It didn’t play to their advantage to have their uniforms be asymmetric. It didn’t look right.
CBN: You sound like a football coach, studying all of these vintage competition videos.
Parrish: (laughing) Yeah, I’m a YouTuber—an addict I guess. I do a lot of traveling and am always trying to pass time in airports.
CBN: Speaking of YouTube, I came across your choreography reel on there. There’s a lot of non-cheer related stuff on it. What projects have been the most memorable for you?
Parrish: Well, the choreography jobs for Fergie’s birthday party at Tao in Las Vegas and the Dirty South awards in Atlanta were pretty memorable, but my recent favorite was the gig I got for SoBe Life Water campaign. You know, the one with the lizards from the Super Bowl ad? I, along with three other chorographers, directed over 50 performers in a “Thriller” dance number that was displayed on a jumbotron in Times Square. I’ve got great agents at Xcel Talent and Clear Talent Group. My agent in New York, Anastasia Miller, remembered me from cheerleading, because she used to cheer at Ohio State. There were 80 choreographers auditioning for those three spots, so that’s one door that cheerleading has opened for me.
CBN: It sounds like you’ve been doing your research and putting a lot of thought into the image of your teams. Anything else you’ve been working on to prep for this season?
Parrish: One of the things I was put in charge of on the national advisory board was to come up with criteria for the new USASF Chairman’s Cup award. Cheerleading gets a lot of bad press on everything from injuries and eating disorders to psycho moms. You name it and we get it. In an effort to combat the negative headlines, we’ve come up with this new 
award that’s going to be presented at The Cheerleading Worlds. In order for a team to enter it, they have to do a philanthropy or event in their hometown that’s positive. It doesn’t even really have to do with cheerleading. From there, they have to get it covered by their local news or radio station and newspaper. The third step they have to do is get it linked on either YouTube or Google. One of the search words we want their positive news item to go under is “injury.” We’re hoping that we can have a plethora of good, wholesome news regarding cheerleading from every team coming to Worlds, so that when a reporter is trying to research stories on cheerleading injuries, he or she’s going to get a ton of hits about the amazing things that teams did this year. Entry info is available on the USASF site, usasf.org. Teams don’t actually have to be a Worlds participant to enter. They can be any team in the all-star community.
CBN: Which U.S. state do you spend the most time in besides your own?
Parrish: New York, because my agent is based there, but for some reason this year, I’ve worked with a lot of New Jersey teams—World Cup Shooting Stars, South Jersey Storm and Cheer Academy.
CBN: Do you notice a big difference between cheerleaders in the South and Northeast?
Parrish: The girls in the Northeast are more showy and aggressive and the girls in the South are more smiley and frilly. Skill-wise, the north was behind in standing tumbling, but they’re beginning to catch up. In the last couple of years, they’ve closed the gap.
CBN: When we first met, I remember being fascinated by the fact that you design women’s dresses. Do you still do this?
Parrish: I do about two wedding dresses a year for my former cheerleaders. That was always the big thing in my program. I used to say, “If you cheer for me, I’ll design your wedding dress.” I have a great seamstress here in Atlanta. Her name is Julie Bates and she can make anything I dream up. She’s done around 11 dresses for Georgia All-Stars alum. I’ve also done a few prom dresses here and there, but that’s as far as it goes with me designing fashion anymore. It’s very time consuming and you really have to live in New York.
CBN: Is there anyone in the industry you’d drop everything you were doing to have lunch with?
Parrish: Bill Boggs. End of discussion. Even though I didn’t cheer for him for long [at the University of South Carolina], the way he ran his camps, taught the kids, ran his practices—everything he did—I modeled after him. I was a school hopper, so I didn’t work with him as much as I would have liked, but he’s just an amazing person inside and out.
CBN: Do you have any words of wisdom you’d like to impart to those who may be just starting out as a gym owner or program director based on your own experiences?
Parrish: If there’s one thing I learned, and newer gym owners should be aware of, is bigger isn’t always better. There’s a profit margin line that’s not always better when you have a million kids out there. I’m really enjoying getting back to the basics with the kids. Now, I can really get to build relationships with the athletes on my teams, where as in the past I had 500 and I could barely remember their names. It’s a different feeling. It’s kind of like going back to the beginning to what made me fall in love with cheerleading in the first place. You know…going with a kid to their college tryout and knowing what’s going on in their lives. Having that small group of parents and being able to have a gym wide barbeque or party at someone’s house. When you have a huge program, those types of activities are hard to do.
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