CSN cheer squad hopes enthusiasm offsets inexperience

That’s what these cheerleaders want to do.

They, like, really want it.

Amber Wofford, for example.

She is 19. She’s never cheered before. She always kind of wanted to, so she tried out. Made it. Takes a bus two hours each way three times a week just to get to practice.

"I picked it up real quick," she says.

Or Jasmine Dong. Oh boy does she want it.

Dong is 30 years old. She already had a bachelor’s degree in English lit, but that wasn’t getting her anywhere. She didn’t want to be a schoolteacher for the rest of her life, so she signed up for a few classes at the local community college.

She’d always wanted to be a cheerleader in high school, but she never had the guts to try.

Then her dad died. This hit her really hard. She was lonely and depressed. She heard the College of Southern Nevada had a new cheerleading team.

She tried out. She wasn’t great, but she had enthusiasm. They signed her up.

"They looked so happy, I had to try it," she says. "I needed that. They’ve been my real family when everything fell apart."

Everybody on the team has a story.

Even coach Caron Milstead.

She came to Las Vegas from the Washington, D.C., area a couple of years ago. She’d raised her kids there, got involved in cheerleading through the Boys & Girls Clubs. As her own children grew, she moved up from little kids to bigger kids to teenagers, getting better as a coach along the way.

When she got to Vegas, she needed a job. She got a temporary gig at CSN. This is the largest school in the state, with more than 40,000 students. Yet, it had no cheerleading team.

Milstead essentially put a slip of paper in the suggestion box saying, Let’s start a cheer squad!

Her temp job turned into a full-time one as an administrative assistant in the retention and recruitment department. At virtually the same time, the cheer squad idea got the OK.

There would be no state money, only a $600 activity budget. Cheerleading isn’t a "sport" in Nevada. It’s a club, like the chess club. The coach wouldn’t get paid, would have to use her vacation time for practices and events. And there would be no money for uniforms or travel.

Milstead held the first tryouts in the fall of 2009. They started out wearing T-shirts and shorts. They held fundraising events, eventually earning enough to buy uniforms.

They’ve tried cheering at the college’s baseball games, but that doesn’t really work. There’s no out-of-bounds on a baseball field. They’ve done some other cheering at college intramural sport events, but there isn’t really enough to keep them busy.

They cheered last year for the Las Vegas Showgirlz, a local team with the professional league the Women’s Football Alliance (yes, really). They cheered at some high school games, too.

They show up at some community events, doing their routines. They also competed in tournaments against other two-year schools.

They took first place in one.

But, because CSN is a community college and students move on to other things all the time, almost half the squad left this past year. They’ve also lost half a dozen team members who missed or were late for too many practices, says the coach. She kicked them off the team.

Tryouts in the last few weeks have netted several new members, but none of them have extensive experience .

They have only one guy on the team, Adam Schaefer, 26, a theater major who happened onto the team because he used to date one of the cheerleaders.

Having just one guy makes it difficult to do some of the lifts. The girls will have to handle them.

Sometimes, the uniforms don’t fit as well as they should. They want new uniforms, but they’re $250 each.

They have more fundraising events planned — a pancake breakfast later this month, car washes — because they’ll also need money if they plan on traveling to regional competitions. Few come to Las Vegas, and they’re usually national level competitions. The team isn’t ready for those yet.

"We’re really in a building phase right now," says the coach.

What makes it harder: Virtually nobody knows they exist. Says team captain Brianna Vargas, "People are like, ‘CSN has a cheer team?’ "

Vargas, 19 and eternally cheerful, is returning to the team. She didn’t cheer in high school, but she was on the dance team. She says this team is getting better. They practice every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They have weekly tumbling sessions at a local sports facility, too.

They plan on putting a video of themselves on YouTube performing a routine for National Dance Day. The July 30 event is sponsored by the TV show "So You Think You Can Dance."

That’s what the team is spending its time practicing right now.

They’ve also got to get ready for some competitions. There’s one in December they’ll definitely attend, and there’s one in October they’re shooting for. If they’re good enough. If they can afford to go.

At the end of it all, they want to win the national championship.

Which is why Coach Caron is going all Sue Sylvester on them right now. She’s really much nicer than the cartoonish coach on TV’s "Glee," but a little yelling never hurt anybody.

"How we doing on the ticket sales for the pancake breakfast?" she says. There is no response. "I sold my 10," she says. "Plus two more."

The cheerleaders resume practicing yet another lift. One, two, three, up.

The girls rise. Their teammates hold them aloft, muscles straining.

Wobbly is a good word for what it looks like, but the moment passes. The girls at the top tumble down like they’re supposed to. Their teammates catch them and ease them to the floor.

Except that Dong, the 30-year-old whose enthusiasm got her the spot on the team, crashes to the floor. Her teammates dropped her.

She pauses before moving to be sure she is not hurt. She is fine.

"All right!" coach Caron says. "Everybody down. Ten pushups. Let’s go!"

On blue mats on the floor of a basketball court at a community college where nobody knows they exist, 10 cheerleaders drop and do what their coach told them to do. There is no complaining, just the sound of 10 girls and one guy doing pushups.

Then they get up. They do the stunt again. They get it right this time. Just like in the movies.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.