Even though she is Shaw High School’s new competition cheer coach, this isn’t Marsha Oates first rodeo. She has had experience coaching teams in the past and discerned very quickly the qualities of a born leader in Briana Grier during the team’s first meeting.
“She is a good athlete and has a great attitude. I knew she would be the captain of the team right away,” Oates says.
Grier, 17, a senior at Shaw, has been a member of the Raiders competition cheer team since coming to the school as a freshman. The 5’1” athlete has been a flyer, base, and back spot in competitive cheerleading, but maybe her most admirable position has been that of a leader.
For Grier, it just seems to come natural to want to promote others and provide guidance. The oldest of four children, her three younger siblings are boys, ages 11, 8, and 8 months. She spends a lot of time helping her mother with their care and has a sense of maturity beyond her years. When asked if she has enhanced her cheerleading voice by yelling at her brothers, Grier demonstrates a quick sense of humor.
“I do. I have to be the oldest around here, and I’m telling them to do their chores and they say they don’t want to. So I remind them I don’t want to be watching you guys; but I don’t have a choice and neither do you,” she says, laughing.
Grier takes the role of big sister seriously. She also takes competition cheerleading seriously. Like most high school cheerleaders, Grier started out cheering for a community football team as a young girl. She had played soccer but gave it up after she discovered cheerleading. Around the age of ten, she started taking lessons at United Cheer Gym in Columbus. That led Grier to being exposed to competition cheerleading, which involved learning difficult tumbling skills.
“The minute I came into United, they told me I was going to be a flyer. I was like, what does that mean? Now I am a Level 4,” she says.
Being a part of the cheer program at United gave Grier an opportunity to travel on a team for competitions and grow into her plan to be a part of a high school team. She left the cheer gym team when she came to Shaw because she wanted to focus on being a part of the Raiders’ competition team.
With her background of tumbling, Grier has mastered some of the techniques necessary for a cheer athlete to participate on a competition team. At this point, the greatest degree of difficulty in tumbling she can perform is a round off back handspring (back handspring again) lay out. For the uninformed, it definitely looks a lot easier than it actually is to pull off.
Grier is now working on nailing down her “full” but thinks her best tumbling skill is her “tuck.” As far as what she enjoys most about the two-and-a-half minute routine filled with stunts, jumps and tumbling each team must perfect in order to do well in competitions, Grier doesn’t hesitate.
“Dance,” she says with a smile.
Mentioning dance in a conversation about cheerleading may further the notion that competition cheer is not really a sport. Grier understands many people only know about the cheerleader on the sidelines of a football game and have never been exposed to competitive cheerleading.
“I would just say come try out. We work as hard as other athletes. We work out. We condition. We get serious injuries doing this, but most people think of cheerleaders they see at games and, not to take away anything from them, because I have done that, competition cheerleading is more highly skilled and complicated,” she says.
Being a part of the competition cheer team at Shaw is not Grier’s only activity outside of academics. She is a member of the school’s ROTC program and has proven herself to be a leader there, too. She just made First Sergeant and has been given charge of her company.
Grier is planning on using those two avenues to pursue a college education. She hopes to try out for a college cheer team but is secure in her plans to use the ROTC experience to get into a nursing program. After that, the Honor Roll student would like to move into pre-med with her eyes on becoming an anesthesiologist.
Right now, Grier is looking forward to a new cheer season with a new coach and some experienced cheer athletes to help advance her team. Being the leader that she is, Grier sees this fall as an opportunity for the squad to develop into winners.
“I believe that we have a lot of girls who are new here, but they have a lot of potential. I believe we can work them into being what we need them to be and that is to be excellent,” she says.
“I love the look of people’s faces when they see me do the flips or difficult tumbling. I am like, yeah, I am the one who did that.”
Columbus Valley/Female Player Spotlight/August 2015
Briana Grier
Shaw High School
Columbus, GA
By Beth Welch
Photos by Jerry Christenson
