Last school year, Wake County officially added stunt to its list of sports for high school students. The county made the addition in order to comply with Title IX, which ensures that there is an equal amount of female and male sports within schools. During the 2015-2016 school year, Wakefield decided to create a team of its own to compete against the other 10 participating schools in the county.

Stunt is a sport that is practiced nationwide. USA Cheer, the National Federation for sport cheering, developed national stunt at the collegiate level in 2010, but just recently initiated stunt at the high school level. Stunt is a growing sport that is commonly associated with cheerleading. However, the sport is independant, and differs from cheerleading in various aspects.

“Stunt takes the cheering out of cheerleading,” said Coach LaShonda Haddock. “Rather than cheering, the girls are just performing stunts. There are three specific types: partner stunts, tumbling and jumps, and pyramid.”

Stunt also compares to cheerleading in the style of practicing and competing.

“I feel like stunt is harder than cheerleading,” said junior Captain, Sarah Blackwood. “In stunt, there is more hard work involved.  Every week we have matches, so we’re always preparing for a competition. While in cheer, we focus on things like football and basketball cheers.”

The competitive stunt meets are organized and carried-out in the manner of a typical game, similar to that of a basketball game.

“Our meets are like games, there are four quarters and a half time,” said junior Bailey Rice. “The different stunts such as pyramid, partner stunts, and jumps and tumbling are each their own separate quarters.”

Quarters one through three are solely devoted to individual types of stunts. However, the fourth quarter is unique from the rest of the meet.

“There are six levels in stunt, so in the fourth quarter the coaches from each team flip a coin to decide who is going to call what stunt,” said junior Captain Blayne Furr. “The coach who wins the toss will call a level number, and then that particular level will go out to perform a stunt routine.”

At stunt team meets, it is not just one team versus the other. There are a total of three schools that compete against each other in one night.

“We compete against three other teams in one match,” said Furr. “Two teams go up against each other at one time; both go out on the mat and do the same routine. Whoever executes the stunt best, wins the match.”

All of the stunt routines are choreographed by the Stunt Board; each team receives the same routine in order to keep the judgments consistent. Team members have put numerous hours practicing and memorizing stunts in order to ensure success in upcoming meets.

“We have two and a half hour practices,” said Blackwood. “We’ve been practicing two days a week, but the first week we practiced every day to learn the basics. Now, we have been breaking into teams and watching the videos on our own.  We do a lot outside of practice to make sure we know the counts because we have to learn six different routines.”

Being the first year that Wakefield has formed a stunt team, expectations are high.

“Since this is our new season, our goal is really to compete,” said Haddock. “We want to win, the goal is always to win, but we really want to be able to compete.”

Despite the sense of unfamiliarity with meets, the stunt team is already expecting rivals.

“I think Millbrook is going to be a good competitor, as well as Leesville,” said Furr.

Team members are eager to see what this season will hold.  They are especially looking forward to the last competition on May 4th, that will be hosted by Wakefield.

“We would love for students to come on the 4th of May and support us,” said Haddock. “We really hope that people learn to love stunt because it’s a really cool sport.”