Parks and Recreation

Wellington Cheer and Dance has all the perks and none of the worries of a traditional all-star program.

By Natalie Keller Reinert

 Imagine running your dream all-star program. What does that fantasy include? How about amazing uniforms, talented athletes and, in all likelihood, the perfect facility. It’s probably centrally located, technologically advanced and boasts all the bells and whistles—a spring floor, a parents’ lounge, a snack bar, your gym’s name in lights out front…with all the work needed to keep it running. Maintaining that perfect gym (and paying for it) could really eat up your time and profits.

Now imagine an all-star program with zero maintenance. The day-to-day cares of maintaining a gym, whether it’s cleaning the bathrooms or worrying about a leak in the roof, are no longer your problem. No cleaning, no plumbing—no worries. The facility hums along, run by an outside staff, and you’re free to concentrate on coaching and creating world-class athletes.

Now meet Christina Reickel. She’s living that dream.

Reickel owns Wellington Cheer and Dance in Florida and has a unique situation: She runs her successful competitive program out of a town rec hall, rent-free. That’s right; no maintenance, no cleaning—no worries.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” admits Reickel when describing her relationship with the Village of Wellington, whose Village Park recreation center houses the “Cheer Room” where the athletes and coaches practice. While other sports have been running their leagues out of publicly owned places for decades (think baseball or soccer), all-star cheer has mostly continued on in the realm of the private gym—until now.

“This is a unique situation because Wellington is a unique town,” Reickel continues. “We have the leisure of working in a state-of-the-art facility. Our program isn’t recreational by any means, but here we are in the rec center!”

 

Hometown Cheer

Reickel is a hometown girl and a lifelong cheerleader. She started out cheering for four years at Wellington HS, and then continued at nearby Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. She went on to work for the Village of Wellington and, as the community expanded its recreational offerings, she began to push for cheerleading to be added to the roster. In 1999, she succeeded, founding Wellington Cheer and Dance with a contract to provide the Village with cheerleading classes and teams. The program started small, with just 13 girls, but by 2004, Reickel had built up her all-star teams by using summer camps and beginner classes to develop a program. In 2011, the Wellington Cougars were poised to enter their seventh competitive season with more than 140 athletes.

Reickel works in tandem with her coaching partner, Patti Gailey, who’s no stranger to competitive cheer herself. Like Reickel, she cheered with FAU’s national champion team, and went on to coach a variety of teams from high school to all-star, before joining forces with Reickel to create the new program for Wellington Cheer and Dance.

Reickel and Gailey coach from their own cheer experience, and during practice sessions they’re just as likely to jump in and demonstrate stunts as to shout instructions from the sidelines. “We’re some of the only coaches left who coach from experience,” Reickel says. “And we still tumble and jump in when we have to.”

The Wellington Cougars had a banner season in 2011, with multiple top-three and championship finishes and, as they continue to expand, it looks like the hometown team and their experiment with a municipally sponsored all-star program has been a success.

 

The Perfect Setup

So, how does a cheer gym end up as part of a towns’s rec program, anyway? It might just be a question of being in the right place at the right time.

Listed at number 72 in Money magazine’s 2010 list of “Top 100 Places to Live,” Wellington, a small suburban village in Florida’s Palm Beach County, has the luxury of a very wealthy tax base. Wellington might be best known for its equestrian lifestyle—its town logo sports a horse head, and a full third of the village is set aside for horse properties, riding trails and show and polo grounds—but since its incorporation in 1995, the place has grown into a family-oriented community with all the accoutrements of a typical suburban town, including an exceptional Parks and Recreation Department.

With more than two dozen parks and public-use centers, the village boasts nearly 2,400 acres of recreational space. The Village’s website advertises activities from adult baseball to wrestling, and everything in between. Some are hosted offsite, such as the horseback-riding summer camp. And some are hosted by the Parks and Recreation Department, an agency that received rare national accreditation at the National Recreation and Park Association 2009 Congress, in some very state-of-the-art facilities that include the Village Park complex, where Wellington Cheer and Dance found its home.

“Our town offers different sports, and kids come from all over Palm Beach County participate in sports here,” says Reickel. Except for all-star cheerleading, her particular passion. So she went to work, and made it happen.

 

Building a Program

When Reickel went to bat for all-star cheer, she had to be specific—this isn’t recreational cheerleading; it’s a competitive sport that requires tryouts, placement and mandatory practice. Cheerleaders (and their parents) had to be prepared for a serious commitment. The potential all-star program would look very different from Wellington’s recreational program, which happens to meet on the fields at Village Park. The rec cheer flyer posted on Wellington’s Parks and Recreation website specifies that teams are filled on a first-come, first-serve basis. The flyer for all-star cheerleading, however, says just the opposite.

And while the Village’s all-star flyer states in bold letters “Team Tryouts Required,” there are occasional misunderstandings. “Sometimes people walk in thinking it’s recreational,” says Reickel. “And you have to explain that their 14-year-old has to start at the beginning.”

Fortunately, Wellington Cheer and Dance is prepared to take potential cheerleaders of all ages. In fact, creating teams from scratch has been Reickel and Gailey’s specialty. In the summertime, their cheer and hip-hop camps, offered for ages 4 to 15, serve as talent scouting for future squad members.

Offering summer camps through the village attracts a variety of kids who might not have felt at ease going to a large private cheer gym. And those who fall in love with tumbling, gymnastics and dancing are able to join beginning cheerleading or hip-hop sessions to prep them for the all-star squads.

“We hook them when they’re young,” laughs Reickel; and it pays off, with a cohesive team of girls who’ve been cheering together for years. “We’ve molded them into perfect little cheer specimens!” Naturally, every coach has her own preferences for how a cheerleader should perform, and Reickel’s method of building from scratch has the advantage in this corner. “Some kids on our senior team—I taught them hip-hop when they were 4.”

 

The Challenges

While most cheer gyms have the benefit of stand-alone commercial properties, complete with shiny signs and posters advertising their name and programs, Wellington Cheer and Dance has a unique challenge: It occupies not a gym building but a room (albeit a well-appointed room) in a municipal hall, which curtails advertising options.

“Most of our recruiting is word of mouth,” says Reickel. “And our rec programs feed into the all-star program.” Meanwhile, “all our advertising is done via the Village of Wellington.” But since the Village also offers rec cheer, Reickel and Gailey sometimes find themselves explaining to parents just how all-star cheerleading works, and why it’s not the kind of team that a person with no experience can just join for fun. “But it’s free marketing,” admits Reickel. “And that’s good, too.” But with the summer camps and beginner’s programs, they often manage to find a place for everyone.

 

The Benefits

Aside from free marketing from the village’s Parks and Recreation Department, Reickel has found many other perks to operating out of a public space. For one thing, the overhead is cut significantly, but they still have the equipment needed to produce competitive athletes. “We have our own cheerleading room, with a recently added spring floor,” says Reickel. “The building is state-of-the-art.”

Owning a gym may be a matter of personal preference in a town like Wellington. After all, Reickel says, there’s really no serious disadvantage to operating out of the rec center. “There’s no need to own our own gym,” she says. “The Village provides us with what we need. If we need equipment, we go to them.” Like the village baseball diamonds or soccer fields, the Parks and Recreation Department handles the necessary upgrades.

It also handles that universal headache for all small business owners: building cleaning and maintenance. For Reickel, the maintenance of keeping up a gym is virtually nonexistent; because the recreation complex is run by the Village, it has its own crew for upkeep. “Wellington handles the cleaning, which saves us a lot of money,” says Reickel.

All in all, it’s an ideal situation for allowing a coach to concentrate on developing athletes and creating competitive teams, Reickel says. “Patti and I teach together and we have none of the little things to worry about, like the day-to-day problems of operating a gym.”

They’re also free from the daily worry over how to make the rent. “We don’t have to build revenue during the day,” Reickel says. “Gym owners have to worry about keeping the gym revenue-producing, and offer Mommy and Me classes and things like that while school’s in session. That’s not a problem for us. We can concentrate on our cheer programs.

“There aren’t any real limitations in not owning our own space. What’s the stereotypical gym? Four walls and some equipment. It’s one of the few businesses you can really start with next to nothing. And we have those things here already.”

As for the parents, Gailey notes, they love having the program at the rec center because it offers a convenience that few other gyms can boast: proximity to many other sports. A family with multiple children can have all their sports and team meetings in one place. Village Park also hosts playing fields, game rooms, playgrounds and more. “It’s a one-stop shop for families,” she says. “A mom can drop her child off at hockey, basketball, soccer, volleyball, lacrosse or even baseball and then drop off her other child at cheer at the same time.”

 

Competition and Community

The program has been gaining in size steadily over the years, and the Wellington Cougars travel to competitions around the southeast region, including JAMFest, U.S. Cheerleading Championships and NCA events. “Our team’s success has been in the making for the last six years,” says Reickel, adding that they learn every day from one another. “And we know it’s due to our dedication, keen eye for the sport and love for what we do. Although we cheered ourselves, it’s important to combine our personal knowledge with the ever-changing world of all-stars.”

At each event the program attends, they’re not just competing for their gym, they’re representing their hometown, Reickel says. “The kids are involved in the town, so there’s a great sense of community pride.”  And this hometown girl takes great pleasure in giving future generations that community pride. “Coaching the Cougars has been more of a hobby than a job,” says Reickel. “Going to work every day is enjoyable because I’m coaching next to my best friend, and every kid who’s walked into the gym has touched our lives in some way.”