Hey! That's really great that you want to be involved! We're a co-ed (male & female) squad , and a competition squad. We combine stunts with dancing and tumbling. This is a video of one of our teams at competition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHwmFpDTA10 - so you can get a better idea of what we do. We also support the Sharks american football team at their games, and cheer for them
We have a social every Wednesday night which are usually fancy dress and involve lots of drinking games, and do annual pub golf with the american footballers, and smurfs with another club (I think last year it was boxing).
And then every year in the spring break, we go on Tour, which is where all the uni sports teams go on a trip abroad (this year was Salou in Spain), and spend 4 or 5 days there - it is literally the highlight of the year.
We also do old boys weekend, where all the old american footballers and cheerleaders come back for a weekend (its really cute because some married each other and have kids!) and this year we did pub golf and a james bond theme party, and then had a game on the Sunday where we did a special routine.
There's no pre-requisites! Honestly, when I saw cheerleading at the athletics fair I just thought, this looks like fun, and decided to go to see what it was like, and I was hooked... dispite the fact I never did gymnastics, don't dance much, and have loads of old injuries from playing tennis... It's helpful if you do have that sort of background, but honestly, I couldn't even do a forward roll when I joined! The important thing is being willing to learn new things
(ps, thought I'd add a little anecdote, I'd been struggling with my tumbling right up until the competition, and never got it quite right, on the morning I tried it in the practice area and it went badly wrong, but had no time because we were on in 5 minutes... I had to wing it, and don't know whether it was the adrenaline, but I pulled it off almost perfect; I was so relieved that I almost forgot the rest of the routine afterwards - but the great thing was that so many people took time out to help me in training, and in the competition everyone noticed I did it, and congratulated me - it's just such an amazing atmosphere, and true definition of a team!)
I can honestly say that joining cheer was the best thing I ever did in uni. it's so much fun! We hope you'll join us! Some of us will be in uniform during Freshers week, so just stop one of us and say hi, we're a nice bunch! Or, visit us at the athletics union fair (not sure time and date yet). We do a two week free practice where people can just turn up and see if they like it, so definitely come along!
Hellooo! I believe that the facilities are excellent for the most part! It really is a case of don't judge a book by it's cover, because a lot of the buildings look awful from the outside (Wilberforce building, ugghhh!) but inside, they are really nice, modern and clean and all lecture halls have good equipment, computers, big screens, microphones etc. All the computers are new ish and have windows 7, but there's plenty of wi fi coverage for your own laptop (bad, because I spend a lot of my lectures online shopping... oops).
The library is, at the moment, in my opinion, mixed... just small things like not enough places to charge laptops, sometimes the photocopiers and printers don't work, but having said that, they're doing a massive regeneration of it this year.
Errrmmm, the student union is excellent! The shop is great, a bit overpriced, but has literally anything you need if you forgot something (and a mega supply of Pro Plus too), the bars and cafes are really great too (again slightly overpriced), there's a bookshop with all the textbooks you might want to buy (but again, overpriced - it's better to buy secondhand from Amazon - I ended up spending a 3 figure sum there for all my textbooks for the first year, to find out I'll never use them again, and can't sell them on as they publish new editions every year).
Sports facilities are in general great. There's all weather pitches, floodlit pitches, an up to date gym and fitness suite (very good price too, works out at like £18 a month with court/pitch hire, classes etc included), and the tennis courts are good too, but it really depends on how much money your individual club has to afford specialist equipment, e.g. at cheerleading we only have 3 mats to train on whereas at competitions there are 9 mats, but they're something ridiculous like £500 a piece to buy, so we work with what we have. I can't speak for other clubs, many have sponsors, and the more members, the more they can afford to buy their equipment.
So overall I'd say it's great! I love being on campus because it's like your own little world there with everything you need, and it's really pretty too