Culture & Community | Dance | Education & Youth | Arts & Culture | Cheer
Members of the New Haven Steelers Varsity Cheer and Dance Team. Lucy Gellman Photo.
A New Haven dance and cheer family has made history in its first year of existence. Now, it’s trying to raise the funds to get to a championship halfway across the country—and represent New Haven on a national stage.
That’s the story for the New Haven Steelers Cheer and Dance Team, which this month qualified for the Pop Warner National Cheer and Dance Championships in Florida. With just over a month until the event, Director Frankie Bryant, coaches Breyiona and Ruby Bryant, and team mom Chazaree Parker are working to secure $10,000 for the team.
The New Haven Steelers comprise varsity, junior varsity, and peewee dance and cheer teams. They are the cheerleaders for the city's eponymously named Pop Warner League football team.
The championships take place Dec. 1 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. Parker, whose daughter is a member of the team, has set up a GoFundMe Page for the group. She said that the overall cost could run the team close to $30,000—meaning that every contribution counts, no matter how small. The cost of getting there includes transportation, lodging and competition fees.
“They’re all my kids,” she said Friday, as dusk fell over a practice outside of Clarence Rogers Elementary School in New Haven’s West Rock neighborhood. “If we can get anything [from the community], it would be a blessing. Even $5 would help.”
Sometimes referred to as the “Lady Steelers,” the group was born earlier this year, in an effort to give students something to do outside of school. Parker, who grew up dancing in Birmingham, Ala., didn’t see a lot of opportunities for her daughter after classes had ended for the day. After working with the Bryants to get it off the ground, she has been “extremely involved,” from every 6 a.m. pre-competition wake up to practices outside in the wind, cold and rain.
It’s second nature for her, she said: she wants to see the girls win, and is often cheering alongside them when they do. In competition season, team members practice five days a week, trekking out to Catherine Brennan and Clarence Rogers Schools for hours before tackling homework and extracurriculars back at home. In the process, they’ve become a family.
Frankie Bryant, a North Carolina transplant who has made her home in New Haven, said she’s thrilled to be part of their journey. For her, it’s all in the family: Breyiona and Ruby are her daughters, and all three are steeped in education and mentorship. She grew up dancing, and saw the good that sports, dance and cheer did for her kids when they were students at James Hillhouse High School.
Now, she wants to pass that on. When the season started, she watched as the team became a tight-knit unit, snagging trophies as it entered its first competitions. She loves seeing members’ young faces light up when they land a tough routine or win recognition on a statewide scale, she said.
“They are basically paving the way for the rest of New Haven,” Frankie said. “That’s our goal.”
Friday night, that sense of family became clear as varsity dance team members spread out beneath an awning, and listened for the beat to drop. As soon as it did, they were in constant, synchronous motion, arms soaring above their heads as knees bent, shoulders rolled back, and feet criss-crossed at the ankles. At the first suggestion of Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison,” they formed a half-circle, opening up a space in the middle where Thomas would later leave viewers slack-jawed.
There was nothing, it seemed, that they couldn’t do with the help of a backing track and a little encouragement from the sidelines. Brass entered the fray, and members formed an undulating line, then hit the ground and began to kick up their legs. By the time they reached a remix of Run D.M.C. and House of Pain, they were airborne, the energy rolling off of them as Parker pulled up her car, and turned her brights into a spotlight.
As the temperature bent towards a wintry chill, members gathered around to reflect on what it would mean for them to get to the championship in Florida. A collective shiver of excitement, punctuated by a few giggles, rippled through the group. The bright yellow of their t-shirts glowed beneath the school’s fluorescent lights.
“It would mean everything,” said Semaj Holness, a seventh grader at Highville Charter School in New Haven’s Science Park neighborhood. “We worked so hard for this. We’ve been out in the elements.”
“These are friends I can get close to,” added Vanessa Gilliams, an eighth grader at Wintergreen Interdistrict Magnet School. While many of the members come from a dance background, this marks the first time most of them have done cheer. There’s a built-in bonding component to learning something new together, she said. Her teammate Timilia Thomas, a freshman at Hillhouse, nodded as she listened.
“What’s really important to me is supporting my cheer sisters and setting an example for New Haven,” said Stephanie Bailey, a freshman at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School.
In addition to the state championships, the group has already become known for its sportsmanship: last weekend, the varsity Steelers took the “Team Spirit” award in a competition at the Floyd Little Athletic Center in New Haven. The award was reserved for a team that cheered other competitors on during the competition.
That sense of a family was everywhere Friday. Dancers huddled, hugged each other, and joked between numbers, but were all business when they began to dance. When the peewee team came over to show off a routine after an hour of practice, varsity dancers cheered them on with cries of Woo! and loud applause that drifted into the night.
It echoed through the space as Parker packed up her car, and then offered to give rides home to at least five members of the team. She is usually the last to leave a practice, checking to make sure that everyone has gotten home safely. Just moments before, she had looked over the group, reflected on how far they'd gone in just a few months, and beamed.
“These ladies are actually history in the making,” she said.
Donate to the GoFundMe here. Learn more about the team here.