North Carolina State University Athletics
Q&A with Cheerleading Coach Harold Trammel
5/31/2006 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
May 31, 2006
RALEIGH, N.C. - Head coach Harold Trammel is enjoying the summer months after recently leading the NC State cheerleading squad to a second-place finish at the National Cheerleaders Association Collegiate Cheerleading and Dance Competition in Daytona Beach, Fla. Alongside his group, the Wolfpack dance team finished third, while Tanner Leggett took home national champion honors in the mascot competition. Trammel, a 2000 graduate of NCSU and cheerleader for five years, recently sat down with GoPack.com to give Wolfpack fans a better understanding of one of the nation's top collegiate cheer programs.
GoPack.com: Talk about preparing for the championships and how long of a process that was.
TRAMMEL: The process starts in the beginning of the year, in April, for us with tryouts. We pick our team, so we have a tryout in the end of April and we get together three times over the summer for a weekend each month. We practice getting everything down for football and start working on our skills.
GoPack.com: Do you compete at all during the summer months?
TRAMMEL: We went to a college camp down at Myrtle Beach this past August and won their spirit routine contest. Still, every chance we get we're just working on our skills and trying to get better. In October we started working on our skills tape, which allows us to qualify for nationals. So basically October through the beginning of December we're videotaping our practice, just trying to put the harder skills together that we can.
GoPack.com: When did you begin to put the nationals routine into place?
TRAMMEL: In January when everyone comes back from the holiday break we taught them their national's routine. At that point we're practicing three or four nights a week, depending on how many basketball games we have, and just trying to get ourselves prepared. This year we did a little something different than we did in the past. We invited a lot of our former cheerleaders back, and some former coaches, to just help critique the routine and give us some feedback. A lot of them just really told us that the kids had to go out and perform. So, just a lot more energy. We worked on that all at practices, and it worked out for them.
GoPack.com: Where exactly does the team practice?
TRAMMEL: We typically practice at Carmichael in the gymnastics facility. We have gone off campus for usually one practice a week, to Impact Athletics in Cary. We actually compete on a hard surface. It's a cork-foam mat. The gymnastics facility actually has a spring floor, which is great for us to learn tricks on, but we actually have to master our tricks on the spring floor and then transfer them to a harder surface. Because of that we've gone over there typically in February and March, just to try and get some experience on a hard floor.
GoPack.com: Talk about the limitations to your roster, as far as rules and competitions go.
TRAMMEL: Competition wise we are limited in the number of people that we can fill on the floor. Our roster actually has 44 cheerleaders and six mascots. We can only compete 20, so the routine that we put together this year, we started out with ten guys and ten girls in the routine, and then about two weeks out we decided we needed an extra guy in the routine, so we switched it to 11 guys and nine girls.
GoPack.com: So, like any other team, personnel changes are made as the year goes on?
TRAMMEL: Exactly. We start planning our routine in December and in January we taught the routine. Some things were coming together like we wanted them to and some weren't. We realized we needed another guy for our partners sequence, just to have a stronger guy in there, and making that change worked out for us.
GoPack.com: Are your routines for football and basketball used when you compete nationally?
TRAMMEL: We start integrating some of our nationals routine skills into what we do for games, like in late January, early February, after we've mastered some of the skills. Using one time out, or one halftime during basketball season, usually late in February or early in March, we're able to get a time out at half time to perform part of our routine. At the end of February of this year we had performed probably three-fourths of our nationals routine.
GoPack.com: How important is the ability to be able to practice your routine and skills in front of crowds before heading to nationals?
TRAMMEL: It's something that we've really pushed for, trying to get them out in front of people as much as we can because performing a competition routine is a little bit different from things we typically do at timeouts. We got them out as early as February.
The second week of February we had our first exhibition where we actually performed most of our routine. Just getting people out in front of other people and performing is another different dimension than just doing the routine at practice. Some people have nerves that you actually realize when you get them out in front of people in a competition-type environment versus things we normally do for games. When we compete, we only get to compete once, so it's really important to make sure you know how people are going to react in front of people. Those are things you can try to control if you know that's going to happen, so you can just try and work with individuals and help them relax and help them focus on what they're doing instead of focusing on the crowd. It's something you need to see people do before we get them down to competition.
GoPack.com: Can you explain the travel arrangements for the cheerleading squad during football and basketball?
TRAMMEL: For us it's fairly easy since we are under the athletic department. They do provide a budget for us to travel to away games. Because of that, we're able to travel six couples for away football.
Six guys and six girls travel and we usually use five rooms when we travel. We bus to most places, but we do fly to Florida State and Boston College.
GoPack.com: How do you finance the voyages to the competitions that you are involved in?
TRAMMEL: Fortunately that's taken care of through our post-season budget. We submit a request at the beginning of the season for our competition, and through the athletic department and the Wolfpack Club, they're able to take care of those expenses. They pay for our uniforms, shoes and bags.
GoPack.com: How often do you switch out your equipment?
TRAMMEL: We switch out our shoes and practice clothes on an annual basis. Warm-ups are usually switched out every two years. We can have uniforms up to four or five years.
GoPack.com: How many different uniforms do you have?
TRAMMEL: Right now we have a total of nine different uniforms. We have five for our red team and four for our white team.
GoPack.com: Explain the difference between the two squads.
TRAMMEL: They're both considered varsity teams, but the red team is the more experienced team that cheers for men's football. Six couples from that team will travel with away football, and they cheer men's basketball. When we travel for tournament play, like the ACC tournament, six couples, or twelve members from that team will get to travel along with one mascot. Our white team cheers for home football only and women's basketball. The same thing applies to them for tournament play. They travel 12 cheerleaders and a mascot to the ACC Tournament and then to NCAA Tournament.
GoPack.com: How do you split the squads at football?
TRAMMEL: This year what we decided to do was split our red and our white team in half. We had half of the team cheering together in front of the student section, and half of the team cheering together in front of the alumni section. We had a number of younger kids this season, and we wanted to make sure we had some experienced people for them to learn from. We had the white team on the front line with red team couples in the back.
GoPack.com: Do the cheerleading and dance teams practice together alongside the mascot?
TRAMMEL: It is split up. Our dance team doesn't fall under the athletic department so they have their own coach and they have to do fundraising. They do a lot of that on their own and they do a great job with it. Both cheerleading squads and our mascot fall under the athletic department.
GoPack.com: Do you have a lot of people coming into NC State with the intention of making the squad? In addition to that, what are you looking for from people who try to make the roster?
TRAMMEL: We focus a lot on physical talent. We have the ability of having cheerleaders try out as stunters or tumblers, so from everyone we want to see some standing tumbling. We look for standing back tuck and toe-touch back tuck. Then our stunters will throw two optional stunts. Girls will need a 720 from one of their stunts. We also have a lot of people try out as tumblers. Tumblers will do the standing tuck, and the toe-touch tuck as well, but they'll throw a standing pass through the full and a running pass, or two running passes, through the full. They'll also throw a toss shoulder stand, and that just shows that we can use them for pyramids whether they're guys or girls.
