ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 21, 1996 TAG: 9611210008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
SOME PEOPLE are born to be bad.
Others are born to lose. To be wild. To shop.
Lisa Chellino was born to cheer.
Consider the evidence:
In the ninth grade, Chellino tried out for the Chantilly High School cheerleading squad - with a broken ankle.
She made it anyway. "I just sat in a chair and did cheers." Chellino recalled. "I yelled really loud."
Nor is she only hot air. At an age when most little girls are still in pinafores, Chellino was already taking formal gymnastics lessons.
Her parents had noted her bouncy potential. "I think I was doing flips off the couches," Chellino said.
Small surprise, then, that Chellino - who now cheers for the Virginia Tech Hokies - was named American Cheerleader magazine's Cheerleader of the Month for December.
"We felt that she combined the essential elements of all we look for in a cheerleader of the month,'' said Julie Davis, the magazine's editor in chief.
Davis said the New York-based magazine gets hundreds of applications for the honor. Chellino said the Tech squad, which attracted some notice after placing high in recent national cheerleading competitions, was asked by the magazine to send in applications. Tech finished fourth in the 1996 National Cheerleading Association nationals in Daytona.
"They said they wanted one of us for the cover," said Chellino - who sent off a resume, then was chosen after magazine officials interviewed her and several of her squad mates in Blacksburg.
The magazine considers academic performance, cheerleading ability, community service and coach's recommendations in making a choice, Davis said. Chellino said she was also asked during her interview to smile.
She received a trunk load of cosmetics for winning - and became an automatic finalist as well for "Cheerleader of the Year" honors, which Davis said will include a $1,000 scholarship "and some other super prizes."
The "Cheerleader of the Year" will be determined by readers' votes and announced in a spring issue of Amercian Cheerleader, magazine officials said. There are seven finalists, including Chellino.
As for winning cheerleader of the month, "I was really excited," Chellino said. "It's nice, since we don't get any kind of scholarship [at Virginia Tech], to be recognized for all the hard work of the last four years."
After she was picked, she said, she spent a full day modeling for the photographs that appear in the magazine. "It was nerve-wracking. I had never done any real modeling. Every time I moved, they had to fix my hair."
If Chellino was nervous in the spotlight, perhaps it's because she really prefers the sidelines. At 20 years old - she will be 21 next month - the Tech senior has been cheering at football and basketball games for half her life.
She began with a youth association the summer before the sixth grade - and she was hooked.
"I loved being in front of the crowds," Chellino said.
The increasing skills needed as she went from junior high school to high school to college cheerleading have kept her from losing interest.
Cheerleading at the college level involves a little more than rustling pompoms while yelling "Hold that line!" In cavernous stadiums, in fact, voices can be swallowed up. College squads often focus much more on gymnastics and spectacular stunts than do younger cheerleading squads.
In addition to the standard cartwheels, flips and rolls, the Tech squad of 10 men and eight women sometimes builds a "pyramid" - in which three stacked rows of upright humanity form a towering triangular wall.
Then there is the "basket toss," in which several burly male cheerleaders stand in a circle, lock their arms together into a kind of trampoline of flesh and sinew - and then fling a female cheerleader tens of feet into the sky. (And then catch her when she comes back down. She hopes.)
None of this is for amateurs. In fact, Chellino said, although junior varsity cheerleading tryouts at Tech often attract scores of hopefuls, varsity tryouts don't. They are so difficult that those who don't possess the necessary skills know better than to try.
"It's all technique," said team coach Eric Williams. "A majority of the men in the program were athletes in high school. The risks that are involved are just like any other sport."
And accidents do happen. A few days before Chellino talked to a reporter, a Tech squad member fell and suffered an injury that will keep her from practicing again for weeks, Chellino said.
Chellino herself has never been seriously hurt. "I was dropped once, when I hyperextended my elbow," she said. "That was it."
In any event, for Chellino the rewards outweigh the risks.
For example, she loves the "basket toss" - the cheerleading equivalent of the human cannonball in the circus. "It's so much fun," Chellino said. "You just soar above the crowd."
Cheerleading is not her whole life. Chellino also hikes with her boyfriend, Danny Kurz, and does charity work for her sorority. Last year she was chairwoman of the class of 1997 Ring Dance decorations committee (lesson learned: ``Don't do anything half way.'')
Chellino is majoring in political science and sociology. She plans to go to graduate school, and eventually work in the federal government.
Sadly, her cheerleading days are numbered and she knows it. Opportunities for post-collegiate cheerleading are limited; Chellino expects to hang up her pompoms when she gets her diploma in the spring.
On the other hand, Chellino insisted, she has learned lessons on cheerleading squads that she can apply to the rest of life. She ticked them off like a modern-day management consultant on the rewards of teamwork:
"It teaches you how to work with a group. You've got to learn how to listen to everybody. It teaches you how to be on time - because if you're not on time, you have to get up and run at 6 o'clock in the morning. Reliability. Trust. You've got to know that people are paying attention and know how to catch you."
Meanwhile, Chellino has cheered at the Sugar Bowl. She has cheered in national competitions. She is Cheerleader of the Month.
She can face her cheer-less future with good cheer - born to cheer or not.
"I'll find other things," she said.
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: MARK HARRIS. 1. American Cheerleader magazine choseby CNBVirginia Tech's Lisa Chellino its Cheerleader of the Month for
December. 2. Lisa Chellino and partner Brad Grigg cheer before the
Tech-Miami game last weekend. 3. Cover of "American Cheerleader.
color. 4. Chellino plans to attend graduate school and work in the
federal government.